Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

 

Very few topics in the whole history of mankind can have given rise to so many absurdities, misunderstandings and misconceptions as the topic of hypnosis. Hypnosis involves a person’s ability to set aside critical judgment without relinquishing it completely, and to engage in make-believe and fantasy. Hypnosis in itself is not a science; its phenomena, though, have proven to be highly amenable to experimental research employing the methodology and procedures of scientific enquiry

From the very beginning the study of hypnosis has been tied up with fantastic conceptions like , animal magnetism , the influence of the stars , and similar tarradiddle. Even nowadays popular conceptions of hypnosis are extremely confused, and journalistic reports in newspapers have done but little to clarify the issue involved.

The history of hypnosis has something important to say about the scientific endeavour in general. One way of looking at how Science progresses is through theories changing over time. And a theory may be thought of as a metaphor, or an as if construct. A metaphor is chosen to help elucidate or explain a phenomenon that is not understood, in terms of other things that seem to be better understood. One metaphor gets replaced by another one that seems a better fit of the facts.

It might have been thought that when serious scientists had exercised the devil of ‘animal magnetism ‘in this through going fashion, and when so much experimental work was available to show the influence that was really operating, a period of patient, quite research would follow, untroubled by arguments about the ancient Mesmeric doctrines. However, this was not to be, and the person responsible for the revival of the doctrine of animal magnetism was a well known French anatomist named Charcot.

Charcot was very much afraid of being deceived by his subjects, and determined that his experiments should be as rigorous and ultra-scientific as his physiological work. He concluded from his studies that hypnotism showed three definite stages;

1. The lethargic stage, which was induced by closing the subject’s eyes, was characterised by an inability on the part of the subject to hear or to speak .Also contractures of a specified nature resulted when certain nerves were pressed.
2. The cataleptic stage was produced by opening the subject’s eyes while he was in lethargic stage  .Now limbs would remain in any position in which they are placed by the experimenter, and the subject was still unable to hear or speak.
3. The  somnambulistic stage could then be induced by applying friction to the top of the head, and it is this somnambulistic condition which appeared similar to what we would now call an ordinary hypnotic trance.

Another phenomenon much stressed by Charcot was that of transference. Sometime he found that the contractures, catalepsies, and so on would appear only on one side of the body. If now a  large magnet was brought close to the limbs in question, the symptoms could be displaces at once to the other side of the body.

Charcot ,J.M.the great French neurologist put forward  a theory  to specify the characteristics in the subject to be hypnotised . According to  him hypnosis could be induced only in abnormal and neurotic subjects , particularly in hysterics and that hysteria was casually related to hypnosis, Bernheim , a professor in medical school at Nancy, who became acquainted  with Liebeault reported that in his work and that of Liebealt  many hundreds of entirely normal individuals had been successfully hypnotised and that consequently there was no special relation of any kind between hypnosis and mental abnormalities. Now all modern workers are agreed that the hypnotic trance can be produced at least as well in mentally normal as in mentally abnormal individuals.

Another old and respectable theory sees hypnotism as a modified form of sleep. The very term ‘hypnosis’ shows that originally the sleep like characteristic  of the hypnotic trance suggested an identification of two states, and Pavlov,the famous Russian psychologist comes foremost in claiming that sleep and  hypnosis are similar, involving a spread of cerebral inhibition in both cases. This theory is almost certainly false. The physiological reaction of the organism under hypnosis is quite different from that which is observed in sleep. Thus certain reflexes are abolished in sleep, but not under hypnosis. Electro-encephalogram  recordings, or ‘brain waves’, show different characteristics in the two states. The evidence is very strong in opposing an identification of these two states.

A more acceptable hypothesis would regard hypnosis as a conditioned response. Such a view might in due course be elaborated into a proper theory, but at the moment it fails completely to account for many of the phenomena associated with hypnosis. How , one might ask, could conditioning account for spontaneous post-hypnotic amnesias? While conditioning cannot be  completely rejected as a likely part of a true theory of hypnosis, certainly by itself it is not sufficient.

Much the same might be said of dissociation as an explanation of hypnotic phenomena. It is well known that part of the cortex and the central nervous system can be dissociated from the reminder of many hypnotic phenomena seem to be of this character. However it will be difficult to account for hypnosis in terms of dissociation , because very little is , infect known about association , so that we would mearly be explaining one unknown by another.

A similar objection might be presented against another view which looks upon hypnosis as an exaggerated form of suggestibility.While,undoubtly,there is a considerably increased degree of suggestibility in hypnosis, it is idle to seek for an explanatory principle in the laws of suggestibility, because very little is known about suggestibility itself. Again we would merely be attempting to explain one unknown to another.

Among the more esoteric theories is a Freudian one, according to which susceptibility to hypnosis depands on the extent of ‘transference’ formed between the subject and the hypnotist. The ‘transference’ is a special relationship which revives attitudes originally present in the parent-child relationship. Added to this are various erotic components which are supposed to be present in hypnosis, which is considered to be a manifestation of Oedipus complex, of masochistic tendencies, and so on.

Weirdest of all is a theory which states essentially ‘ that the phenomena of hypnosis result from the subjects motive to behave like a hypnotized person, as defined by hypnotist, and as understood by the subject’. This is perhaps the most question-begging of all, because it leaves unanswered the two crucial questions as to why the subject should want to behave in this fashion, and how he manages to do this. It is all very well to say a person wants to behave like a hypnotized subject, but how does that help him to produce analgesia to an operation?

Most promising perhaps is a theory of ideo-motor action. There is ample experimental evidence to show that ideas of certain movements are closely related to the execution of these movements. If electrodes and amplifier are connected to the muscles of the arm and the subject is told to lie quite still on a couch, but to imagine that he is lifting that arm, then a barrage of nervous impulses is recorded as passing through the nerves and into the muscles which would have been used had the movement, infect, been executed. Thus nerve transmission and mental images or ideas are closely related, and, indeed , it appears that the one is never found without the other. Without going into the question of which causes which, the mutual interdependence of mental and physical phenomena does not seem to be in doubt. Under these conditions, the possibility of achieving changes in a person’s behaviour through verbal means, as in hypnosis, appears possible. At best, this is only a partial theory and it stands very much in need of considerable amplification. If it could be combined with some such form of inhibition theory, we might here have the beginning of a true theory of hypnosis .At the moment such a theory cannot be said to exist, and all that we can do is to note the experimental facts, which are reasonably well established, and hope that a greater interest in these important discoveries will eventually lead to greater knowledge.

Thus, Mesmer can be seen as embracing the metaphor of Animal Magnetism and as arguing that it is as if the behaviors he observed were the product of this invisible force that he could harness, accumulate in his body, and transfer to sick people. Faria with lucid sleep, Puysegur with artificial somnambulism, and Braid with hypnosis were all saying that it was as if the magnetized person was in a state akin to nocturnal sleep. Liebeault and Bernheim adopted the metaphor of suggestibility for precisely the same reason, though their logic was a little askew; they maintained that since suggestion is an essential ingredient of the hypnotic process, suggestibility must be the key as if formulation for understanding it. The same can be said of Charcot in seeking to link hypnosis with hysteria, since many of the behaviors found in hysteria could be reproduced in hypnosis — it was to him as if hypnosis followed processes similar to those he had observed in this particular class of patients.

Formal and “Disguised” hypnosis

Formal hypnosis is straightforward; one person (the hypnotist) informs another person) that she/he, with the person’s permission, will attempt to induce hypnosis.

“Disguised” hypnosis, by contrast, is an imagination-based procedure that the practitioner does not represent as hypnotic in nature. Nevertheless, it taps into the mechanisms thought to underlie responsiveness to hypnosis — namely imagination and absorption . Here, it needs to be emphasized that a large variety of procedures can be represented as hypnosis.

Earlier formulations of ‘disguised” hypnosis stem from the clinical work of Milton Erickson during the 1950s and experimental research of Theodore X. Barber during the 1960s. A renewed interest in disguised hypnosis has developed in recent years as the result of it being adopted by many therapists who search for repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. In practice, procedures such as guided imagery, regression work, dream analysis, “relaxation” and  represented as “truth serum” function as hypnosis by another name.

To evaluate the behaviour of a hypnotized person , it is important that the context in which it occurs be examined. One can arrive at quite radically different conclusions about the nature of hypnosis, depending upon whether it has been dispensed on the stage for entertainment purposes, in the clinic for therapeutic reasons, or in the forensic contest in an attempt to bolster the fragmented memory of a crime victim or witness who may have been traumatized by such an experience.

Stage hypnosis
Stage hypnosis is the foremost source of the stereotypes that abound about hypnosis. The belief that the hypnotized person is an automation, completely under the sway of the hypnotist is the most pervasive of all folkloric misconceptions about its phenomena. In actuality, candidates for stage hypnosis are screened by the stage hypnotist for a high level of hypnotizability. Once this is established, the next step is to determine that the volunteer endorses the “rules of the game” of stage hypnosis, which is to entertain an audience.

Therapeutic hypnosis
In therapeutic hypnosis has been utilized successfully as an adjunct, or ancillary, procedure in therapy that is psychoanalytic, gestalt, non-directive, or any of the many varieties of behaviour modification that are based upon learning theory. Therapeutic hypnosis is directed towards helping a person placed in the role of patient to alter his/her behaviour by replacing self-defeating habits and patterns with adaptive ones. Therapy focused on excavating “lost” memories of childhood abuse, by contrast, is not therapeutic since it seeks to treat psychic distresses by resort to a theory of repressed incest memories and a belief that such “insight” leads to the automatic dissipation of symptoms. There is no evidence to support these beliefs.

Forensic hypnosis
Forensic hypnosis is predicated upon some questionable assumptions, particularly the belief that memory is reproductive rather than reconstructive, and that there is a hypnotic hypermnesia effect. It is true that seemingly inaccessible memories may emerge in a hypnotic context, but there is never any certainty that when this occurs in hypnosis, it is caused by hypnosis. In addition, , hypnotically elicited recollections are not necessarily true, no matter how vivid and subjectively compelling they may be to the hypnotized person or to an observer of his/her behaviour.

Experimental, laboratory hypnosis.  In the laboratory context is that the hypnotized person agrees to assist an investigator to learn something additional about hypnosis and to contribute to a scientific understanding of it. This, despite token payment at best, and the likelihood of experiencing  pain, boredom and fatigue over a prolonged period. This more altruistic role for the hypnotized person is in marked contrast to entertaining an audience, having one’s behaviour altered by clinical procedures, and “restoring” memories of a crime in a forensic setting.

General procedure of Hypnosis

There are many methods of producing hypnosis; indeed, almost every experienced hypnotist employs variations differing slightly from those of others. Perhaps the most common method is something along these lines. The hypnotist tries to obtain his subject’s co-operation by pointing  out to him the advantages to be secured by the hypnosis, such as , for instance , the help in curing a nervous illness to be derived from the patient’s remembering in the trance certain events which otherwise are inaccessible to his memory. The patient is reassured about any possible dangers he might suspect to be present in hypnosis, and he may also be told that it is not a sign of Instability or weakness to be capable of being put in a hypnotic trance, but that, quite on the contrary, a certain amount of intelligence and concentration on the part of the subject is absolutely essential.

Next , the subject is asked to lie down on a couch, or sit in on easy chair. External stimulation is reduced to a minimum by drawing the curtains and excluding as far as possible, all disruptive noises.It is sometime helpful to concentrare  the subjects attention onsome small bright object dangled  just above eye-level, thus forcing him to look slightly upwards. This leads quickly to a fatigue of the eye-muscles , and thus facilitates his acceptance of the suggestions that he is feeling tired and that his eyes are closing. The hypnotist now begins to talk to the subject in a soft tone of voice, repeating endlessly suggestions to the effect that the subject is feeling drowsy, getting tired, that his eyes are closing, that he is falling in a deep sleep, that he cannot hear anything except the hypnotist’s voice, and so on and so forth. In a susceptible subject , a light trance is thus induced after a few minutes, and the hypnotist now begin to deepen this trance and to test the reactions of the subject by giving suggestions which are more and more difficult of execution. Thus he will ask the subject to clasp his hands together and tell him that it is impossible for him to separate his hands again. The subject, try as he may find, to his astonishment, that he cannot in actual fact pulls his hands apart. Successful suggestions of this kind are instrumental in deepening the hypnotic trance until, finally, in particularly good subjects, all the phenomena which will be discussed presently can be elicited.

This , very briefly, is the routine method of establishing a trance. It is very difficult to know just which of the elements mentioned are really important.

Hypnosis is not a dangerous procedure in itself, but complications may occur as the result of faulty technique on the part of the hypnotist, or from misperceptions on the part of the hypnotized person. The topic is a vast one . In terms of technical errors by the hypnotist, there is the occasional report of a hypnotized person failing to emerge from a trance. There are various ways of resolving this difficulty, but in a safe environment, the worst that can happen is that the hypnotized person finishes up having a prolonged sleep.

Sometimes, hypnotic age regression may elicit traumatic memories of past events; again, there exist straightforward procedures for relieving the painful emotion of such memories, regardless of whether they are based upon fact or fantasy. Further, there are data that show that the failure to cancel or remove a suggestion after it has been administered and tested in trance may lead to its post-hypnotic persistence. The simple remedy for this problem is for the hypnotist to be meticulous in canceling suggestions.

On the other hand, many of the complications that can occur with hypnosis stem from the hypnotized person’s perceptions of it. Most of them can be avoided by questioning the person carefully during the pre-hypnosis period about his/her knowledge and beliefs about hypnosis. Beliefs such as that the hypnotized person is an automaton, unable to resist any suggestion that is administered, or that the person may not be able to terminate trance, can best be met with factual knowledge, or even the invitation to resist a particular item during hypnosis.

It is genrally believed that the isolation, the quite and the darkness is important for hypnosis. Sucessful hypnoses have been carried out under noisy conditions, in broad daylight ,and even , as is well known, on the stage in the presence of thousands of people,Some hypnotists, infact, claim that these conditions are more favourable to the induction oh hypothsis than those of absolute quite and segregation. No experimental work, again , has been done on this question, but it may be surmised that different conditions suit different people , and that where as extraverts and hysterics may be more easily hypnotized under conditions of noise, excitement , and while in the limelight , introverted and anxious people might prefer the quite of the consulting-room. This however, has by no means been established as a fact.

Contrary to popular superstition, there is little difficulty in awakening the subject once the experimenter decides to end the trance . He usually suggests to  the subject that when he ,the experimentater, counts up to ten, the subject will awaken from his sleep, that he will forget everything that has happened during the hypnotic trance, that he will feel well and refreshed , and that he will feel all the better for his experience. There are no records of any difficulties in awakening subjects along these lines, and even if the hypnotist should , for some reason, be unable to break off the hypnosis, all that would be likely to happen would be for the subject to fall into an ordinary sleep and wake after a few hours with no evil after-effects.

Again, the belief that post-hypnotic amnesia is permanent can be defused by explaining that amnesia is reversible, and that when the amnesia suggestion is administered, a post hypnotic cue will be given so as to relieve the amnesia. On some occasions, also, when an affect-laden memory is elicited, the operator may place the onus upon the hypnotized person to decide how much, if any, of the traumatic material s/he wishes to recall.

Many of the issues already discussed concerning the effects of hypnosis upon memory are controversial. There are those who believe that there is a hypnotic hypermnesia effect, or that confidence is not enhanced by hypnosis , A current major controversy concerns traumatic memory. Some argue that such memories are processed by the brain in a manner different from untraumatic memories; whereas everyday working memory is processed at the level of the hippocampus and its connecting areas, traumatic memories are thought to be processed by the limbic system. This may turn out to be true; currently there is insufficient evidence bearing on this limbic involvement for traumatic memories In addition, proponents of this view hold that traumatic memories, on account of their vividness (which nobody disputes) are more likely to be accurate (which is highly disputable).

The issue of memories “recovered” in psychotherapy has become controversial in an unexpected way. Some see it as an attack on all psychodynamically oriented clinicians who seek to understand a patient’s current difficulties in terms of his/her past experience.

Given that the effects of sexual abuse are highly variable, it would come as no surprise if it were found that a background of childhood sexual abuse is implicated in at least a proportion of cases diagnosed in every known clinical syndrome

 

 

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

“A dream is a work of art which requires of the dreamer no particular talent, special training, or technical competence. Dreaming is a creative enterprise in which all may and most do participate.” – Clark S. Hall

Mankind has always been interested in dreams and many attempts have been made to interpret the meaning of them. The reasons for this interest are not difficult to find Dreams are odd and striking phenomenon similar to waking thought in some ways , but quite dissimilar in others . The objects which enter into the dreams are usually everyday kind of objects, similarly the places where the dream occurs is usually a familiar one. Yet what happens in the dreams is often quite unlike the happenings of everyday life.

Psycho-analysts often try to interpret certain aspects of the dreams by taking into account the setting. As much of this is tied up with the theory of Freud, a brief discussion of this at least is essential , although most people will already be familiar with some of its aspects.

Freud’s work was solely related with internal stimuli. Essentially, for a person to continue to sleep undisturbed strong negative emotions, forbidden thoughts and unconscious desires have to be disguised or censored in some form or another. Otherwise, confronted by these, the dreamer would become distressed and they would eventually wake up. Therefore the dream, if understood correctly, could lead to a greater understanding of the dreamer’s subconscious.

According to Freudian theory, the first hypothesis is that the dream is not a meaningless jumble of images and ideas, accidentally thrown together, but rather that the dream as a whole, and every element in it, are meaningful.

The second point that Freud makes is that dreams are always in some sense a wish fulfillment; in other words, they have a purpose, and this purpose is the satisfaction of some desire or drive, usually of an unconscious character.

Thirdly, Freud believes that these desires and wishes, having been repressed from consciousness because they are unacceptable to the socialised mind of the dreamer, are not allowed to emerge even into the dream without disguise. A censor or super-ego watches over them and ensures that they can only emerge into the dream in a disguise so heavy that they are unrecognizable.

Let us look at these three propositions in turn. The idea that the dream is meaningful is very ancient one. For Freud it follows directly from the deterministic point of view, i.e. from that point of view all mental and physical events have causes and could be predicted if these causes are fully known. This cause effect relationship is beyond the limits of time for example Hindus who believe in reincarnation and continuity of consciousness even relates it with previous birth events or experiences.

Freud’s argument of the meaningfulness of dream is directly connected with his general theory that all our acts are meaningfully determined; a theory which embraces mispronunciation, gestures, lapses, emotions, and so forth.

Let us now turn to the second part of Freud’s doctrine. Roughly speaking, Freud recognized three main parts of the brain functioning in the personality.

• The Id
• The Ego
• The Super-ego.

The Id works in keeping with the pleasure principle, which can be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately. Just picture the hungry infant, screaming itself blue. It doesn’t “know” what it wants in any adult sense; it just knows that it wants it and it wants it now. The infant, in the Freudian view, is pure, or nearly pure id. And the id is nothing if not the psychic representative of biology.

According to Freud, the Id directs basic drive instincts. It is unorganized and seeks to obtain pleasure, or avoid pain, at times when increased arousal of tension takes place.

Freud described the Id as such: “It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the dream-work… and most of that is of a negative character… We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations… It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle”.

The Id, according to Freud, “’knows no judgements of value: no good and evil, no morality… [It is] the great reservoir of libido”. From the outset (i.e. birth) the Id includes all the instinctual impulses as well as the destructive instinct.

The ego, unlike the id, functions according to the reality principle, which says “take care of a need as soon as an appropriate object is found.” It represents reality and, to a considerable extent, reason.

The Ego seeks to please the instinctive drive of the Id but only in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term. The Ego, says Freud, “attempts to mediate between id and reality”. The Ego comprises organized structure of one’s personality. In other words, the great majority of the Ego’s operative duties are at a conscious level (e.g. defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions).

There are two aspects to the superego: One is the conscience, which is an internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called the ego ideal. It derives from rewards and positive models .The conscience and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with feelings like pride, shame, and guilt.

The Super-Ego aims for perfection. Freud said: “The Super-ego can be thought of as a type of conscience that punishes misbehaviour with feelings of guilt. In other words, the Super-Ego, in its role of moral authoritarian, is the opposite of the Id.

Where the Id is entirely about satisfying instinctive need with no regulation over morals to achieve that objective, the Super-Ego operates in accordance with social conformity and appropriateness. Due to these extremes, the Ego  is constantly striving to regulate balance between the two. In all, the Super-Ego regulates our sense of right and wrong. It helps assimilate into the social structure around us via making us act in socially acceptable ways. It acts as our conscience, maintaining our sense of morality.

As stated above, Freud theorized that the Ego is constantly under the strain of causing discontent on two sides (i.e. the Id and Super-Ego). The role of Ego is like a servant in between two masters .Ego has a  role to minimize conflicts whilst simultaneously pretending to care about the said same reality.

The Super-Ego is the Ego’s constant watchdog and if/when it (the Id) steps out of line, the Super-Ego punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority. However, the Ego will then employ mechanisms to defend itself such as denial, displacement, intellectualization, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, and sublimation. These mechanisms are not undertaken at a conscious level, they kick in when the Id’s behaviour conflicts with reality .

As  unconscious or Id cannot be probed directly , efforts are made to know about it through indirect or disguised  techniques. These techniques can be analysed in two forms;

1. Pseudo-scientific techniques- like Physiognomy, palmistry, serology ,astrology etc
2. Scientific techniques,-  These can further be divided into three forms;

A-subjective techniques-Like biography, case study etc.

B-Objective techniques=Like questionnaire, rating scales etc.

C-Projective techniques- Like story writing, thematic apperception tests, Rorschach ink blot test, Free- association, word- association, Dream interpretation etc.

The Freudian concept can very simply linked up with his theory of dream interpretation. The forces of the Id (unfulfilled biological, anti-social desires) constantly trying to express themselves or to say trying to gain control  of the Ego and to force themselves into consciousness . During  the individual waking life , the Super-Ego firmly repress them and keeps them unconscious; during sleep however the Super-Ego is less watchful and consequently some of the desires start up in the Id and are allowed to escape in the form of dreams . However the Super-Ego may nod , but it is not quite asleep and consequently these wish-fulfilling thoughts require to be heavily disguised . This disguise is stage-managed by what Freud calls the dream work. Accordingly, it is necessary to distinguish between the manifest dream, i.e. the dream as experienced and perhaps written down, and the latent dreams ,i.e. the thoughts, wishes, and desires expressed in the dream with their disguises removed.

A dream is a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. The interpretation of dreams has as its object the removal of the disguise to which the dreamer’s thoughts have been subjected. It is, moreover, a highly valuable aid to psycho-analytic technique, for it constitutes the most convenient method of obtaining insight into unconscious psychical life. (From: On Psychoanalysis).

According to Freud the dream has two parts. The manifest content and the latent content. The manifest content can be thought of as what a person would remember as soon as they wake – what they would consciously describe to someone else when recalling the dream. Freud suggested that the manifest content possessed no meaning whatsoever because it was a disguised representation of the true thought underlying the dream.

On the other hand, the latent content holds the true meaning of the dream – the forbidden thoughts and the unconscious desires. These appear in the manifest content but will be disguised and unrecognisable

The process by which the latent content is transformed into the manifest content is known as the “dream work”. The dream work can disguise and distort the latent thoughts in the following four ways:

1: Condensation: This is the process in which the dreamer hides their feelings or urges by contracting it or underplaying it into a brief dream image or event. Thus the meaning of this dream imagery may not be apparent or obvious. Two or more latent thoughts are combined to make up one manifest dream image or situation. Dreams can put layers of complex meaning within very simple manifest content.

The dream is reserved, paltry, and laconic when compared with the range and copiousness of the dream thoughts…. One is really never sure of having interpreted a dream completely; even if the solution seems satisfying and flawless, it still always remains possible that there is a further meaning which is manifested by the same dream. Thus the amount of condensation is—strictly speaking—indeterminable. (Freud, pp. 261-262)

2: Displacement: This occurs when the desire for one thing or person is symbolized by something or someone else.   Instead of directing the emotion or desire toward the intended person or object it is transferred onto a meaningless / unrelated object in the manifest dream. . Dream content is not used in dream thoughts in the same way it manifests in the dream. “That which is clearly the essential thing in the dream thoughts need not be represented in the dream at all. The dream, as it were, is eccentric; its contents are grouped about other elements than the dream thoughts as a central point” (Freud, p. 283).

3: Symbolism: This is characterized when the dreamer’s repressed urges or suppressed desires are acted out metaphorically. Where complex or vague concepts are converted into a dream image. For this, the mind may use the image of a similar sounding (more recognizable) word instead or use a similar looking less intrusive object. According to Freud, dream symbols are for the most part sexual in meaning thus many dreams (but not all) have a sexual correlation. – In the course of investigating the form of expression brought about by the dream-work, the surprising fact emerged that certain objects, arrangements and relations are represented, in a sense indirectly, by “symbols”, which are used by the dreamer without his understanding them and to which as a rule he offers no associations. Their translation has to be provided by the analyst, who can himself only discover it empirically by experimentally fitting it into the context. It was later found that linguistic usage, mythology and folklore afford the most ample analogies to dream-symbols. Symbols, which raise the most interesting and hitherto unsolved problems, seem to be a fragment of extremely ancient inherited mental equipment. The use of a common symbolism extends far beyond the use of a common language. (From: Two Encyclopaedia Articles).

The task of the analyst and interpreter on this view is to explain the manifest dream in terms of the latent dream. Freud uses two methods. The first is the method of symbolic interpretation and the other is the method of association.

During free association, the dreamer is steered toward focussing on the thoughts and emotions the dream produces and not its direct content. Freud believed this technique, once initiated, led to a flow of more thoughts and emotions associated with the dream. Many people believe free association to simply be saying whatever comes into the patients head. This is not so. The patient’s comments are founded on the links between, their dream, what they say to begin with about their dream, what they say after that, and so on and so on.

The technique of free association is essentially based on the 19^th century doctrine of associational philosophers. They believed that ideas became linked through association similarity or through contiguity and the mental life could be understood entirely in terms of such associations .If ideas are linked in a casual manner, as is suggested by this theory, then we should be able to find links between manifest and latent phenomenon by starting out with the former and, through a chain of association, penetrate to the latter. In other words, what is suggested is this: starting out with certain unacceptable ideas which seek expression, we emerge finally with unintelligible ideas contained in the manifest dream. These having been produced by the original latent ideas, are linked to them by a chain of associations, and we shall be able to rediscover the original ideas  by going back over the chain of ideas. In order to do this , Freud starts out by taking a single idea from the manifest dream and asking the subject  to fix the idea in his mind and say aloud anything that comes into his mind associated with that original idea . The hope is that in due course a chain of association will lead to the latent casual idea.

 

First let us consider the use Freud makes of the theory of symbolism. Very much like the old dream books, Freud provides whole list of symbols standing for certain things and certain actions .However , where the old dream books had rather a rigid religious ethical dominance ,Freud  concentrate almost exclusively on libido and sexual relations. The male sex organ is represented in the dreams by a bewildering variety of symbols. Anything that is long and pointed- a stick, a cigar , a chimney a steeple , the stem of flower- is so interpreted because of the obvious physical resemblance. A pistol, a knife, forceps, a gun-these may stand for male sex organ, because they eject and penetrate; similarly a plough may become a sex symbol because it penetrate the earth. Riding a horse, climbing stairs, and numerous other common sense activities stand for intercourse. Hollow objects and containers are feminine symbols: houses, boxes, saucepans, vases- all represent the female genitals.

 

Certain symbols are chosen more frequently than others because they represent in a single objet a variety of conceptions. The moon, for instance, is such a condensed and over-determined symbol of woman; the monthly phases of moon resembles the menstrual cycle; the filling out of the moon from new to full, symbolizes the rounding out of the woman during pregnancy. The moon is inferior to sun; the moon is changeable like a fickle woman, while the sun is constant. The moon controls the ebb and flow of the tides, again linking it to the family rhythm. The moon, shedding her weak light, embodies the idea of feminine frailty. Rhythm, change, fruitfulness, weakness, submissiveness, all of the conventional conceptions of woman, is compressed into a single visible object.

The conception of dream interpretation through symbolism seems to apply quite well to many of the dreams, but it does not seem to apply particularly well to many other dreams. The truth appears to be that any writer on dream interpretation seems to find it possible to quote a few dreams in support of his views, but that these theories cannot usually be applied to dreams quoted by people having a different theoretical outlook. This suggests that all theories of dream interpretation may have a certain limited amount of truth in them, but that they do not possess universal significance and apply only a relatively limited part of the field.

 

There is one further difficulty in accepting the symbolic interpretations presented by so many dream interpreters. How, it may be asked, do we know that a motor-car stands for the sexual drive; might it not simply stand for a motor-car? In other words, how can the poor dreamer ever dream about anything whatsoever, such as a house, a screw, a syringe, a railway engine, a gun, the moon, a horse, walking riding, climbing stairs, or indeed anything under the sun, if these things are immediately taken to symbolize something else? What will happen if you took a common place, every day event such as a train journey and regarding it as an account of a dream? All we can dream about, if we follow the Freudian theory is sex, sex, and sex again. The individuals may try to experiment of describing a football match or a walk in the fields or a day at the office without the use of phrases which would, according to Freud, have a sexual connotation. He would soon find that there is practically no object in common use, and no activity frequently indulged in, which cannot be made to symbolize some aspects of the sexual process.

One may feel at this point that while the discussion may have been quite interesting at times, it has not produced a single fact which could be regarded as having scientific validity. Everything is surmise, conjecture, and interpretation; judgements are made in terms of what seems reasonable and fitting. This is not the method of science. You do not argue about Ohm’s law or the law of gravitation or the circulation of blood. You state a definite hypothesis,, make certain deductions from this hypothesis  and then proceeds to carry out experiments to prove or disprove your theory. That is the scientific method and that is precisely what is missing in all the work we have been summarizing so far.

The blame for this state of affairs must be squarely laid at the door of the analysts. Whose efforts have always been directed towards persuasion and propaganda, rather than towards impartial investigation and valid proof.

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

A unit is an outline of carefully selected subject matter which has been isolated because of its relationship to students need and interests. Thus, a well planned teaching unit is the coordinated form of different types of activities. These activities provide new information on one hand and on the other hand, they are helpful for the evaluation of students. Teacher can determine these teaching units either all by himself or with the cooperation of his fellow teachers jointly.

It is a core, a back-bone a key concept or pivot of lesson planning. It concerns with the subject-matter, content and teaching strategies. The content is analyzed into units. These units are complete in it. These are arranged logically which work psychologically in effective and permanent learning. These units can be taught independently and can be measured independently these teaching units help to decide the teaching strategies, teaching tactics and audio-visual aids. These units provide basis for liking new knowledge with the previous knowledge of student’s Units help in relating teaching with learning

Morrison, the foremost educationist who propounded the basic concept of teaching unit, concentrated on actual change in the behavior of the learner, what he called an adaptation Morrison holds that genuine learning consisted of the student adapting or responding to a situation. Rejecting the notion that learning referred only to the acquisition of subject matter, the unit was the procedure used for the teaching of an adaptation based on a stimulus-response psychology.

Morrison’s categorization of learning into a cycle of three phases:

Stimulus,

Assimilation,

Reaction,

In developing his concept of mastery learning, Morrison distinguished between learning and performance. Mastery, according to Morrison, is when students focus on learning a skill and acquire a fundamental grasp of subject matter. Once students have achieved a certain level of learning, they attempt to apply the skill; this application is called performance. The next step achieved is adaptation, the stage at which students become able to apply their learning to any situation.

Steps of a Teaching Unit

1.   Pre-active phase or introductory phase. New knowledge is linked with the previous knowledge so as to develop appreciative mass of the students by teaching units. These units help in motivating students. They provide awareness of teaching objectives to learners.

2.   Inter-active phase. With the help of nits, appropriate learning experience is provided to perform certain activities to facilitate student-learning.

3.   Post-active phase. The teaching units help in evaluating learning objectives in terms of student’s performance. It also provides feed-back to teaching learning process.

ELEMENTS OF TEACHING UNITS

1. Overview. Objectives of teaching unit are formulated on the basis of level of student i.e. their previous knowledge, age, intelligence, interest and social, cultural and personal need; and nature of the subject-matter.

2. Inventory or Back-ground. Previous knowledge of students is explored. Their motivational state and level of aspiration are also explored by asking some question or giving a pre-test.

3. Presentation. Every element of teaching unit provides new learning situations or experiences to learners. They are presented in a logical sequence which helps in more retainable learning.   Lecture, discussion, demonstration or any teaching strategy supplemented with teaching aids and question – answer technique encourage student’s participation.

4. Motivation. It is an important factor for facilitating learning. It is also known as leading phase of learning. It involves several techniques, use of audio-visual aids etc.

5. Summarization. Induction-deduction approach (i.e. whole to part teaching) is utilized for comprehension of the unit. The elements of teaching-units are summarized   at the end of presentation.

6. Drilling and Review. Drilling or practice of elements of a unit is must. The student learns better and retains longer if the drill is organized or review is done. Drilling and reviewing is done orally.

7. Organization. Assignments are given to students to organize their learning experiences according to their own ability.

8. Evaluation. Evaluation is done by short answer questions orally to ascertain how far the teacher could achieve real learning outcomes by presenting teaching units.

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF UNIT-METHOD

1. .Principle of Interest and Purpose. In order to achieve the objectives of the unit the teacher creates interest in the pupils. This brings the desired changes in their behavior.
2. Principle of Unit. The process of acquiring knowledge, the teacher presents the content of a unit before the pupils giving supremacy to the unity of ‘Wholeness’.
3. Principle of Child’ Supremacy. The activities of the pupils are emphasized in the entire teaching while assigning the special importance to the needs and basic instincts of the pupils.
4. Principle of Organization. In order to provide complete knowledge to the pupils, various teaching materials should be used and organized.
5. Principle of Dynamism. All the teaching units should be dynamic. Dynamism is the key to teaching. The teacher should apply the principle of dynamism according to the need. It makes the scope of each unit wider and pupils acquire it easily.
6. Principle of Recitation. From psychological point of view, recitation marks the new knowledge in the minds of pupils. Hence, recitation by the pupils is encouraged in unit-method.

ELEMENTS OF TEACHING UNIT

Division of Content. The entire subject-matter is divided into smaller units. By concentrating on them pupils understand these smaller units easily.

Giving Practical Shape to Teaching Process. After understanding the smaller units of the subject matter they are given practical shape.

Overview. The teacher determines the objectives of the teaching unit in such a way that the needs of the pupils are fulfilled and they are so much motivated that they may acquire new knowledge with interest. After introduction the teacher states the aim so that the pupils get aware of the scope of teaching units.

Previous Knowledge. The get aware of the previous knowledge of the pupils for their knowledge, the teacher asks questions from the pupils so that after relating the previous knowledge to the new knowledge is may decide the point to start.

The elements of the contents The elements of the contents are presented in a logical order. The lessons is developed with the cooperation of the pupils .Question answer method is used. If the pupils fail to answer the questions the teacher interprets the elements himself.

Motivation. As every activity of the teaching unit is performed for learning, the teacher should motivate the pupils at intervals so that they may continuously show interest in the teaching and get ready to learn.

Summarize. It enables the teacher to give the summarized form of the lesson.

Drill and Recapitulation. These techniques are important to minimize forgetting in learning. The pupils may retain the learning experiences for longer duration.

Organization. To provide proper provision for organizing the acquired experiences, the teacher assigns home work to the pupil which helps them in organizing the acquired Knowledge.

Evaluation. There is a provision of evaluation the knowledge acquired by the pupils which makes them aware of the limit of acquisition of the objective. Oral questions or oral and written tests are used for this purpose.

SUGGESTED ADMINISTRATION OF TEACHING UNIT

Pre-active phase or introductory phase- New knowledge is linked with the previous knowledge so as to develop appreciative mass of the students by teaching units. These units help in motivating students. They provide awareness of teaching objectives to learners. The pupils are made clear about the teaching objectives to make them curious to gain new knowledge

Inter-active phase/ Presentation Phase- With the help of units, appropriate learning experience are provided to perform certain activities to facilitate student-learning. Learning experiences are provided to the pupils while presenting the contents

Post-active phase/ Evaluation Phase- The teaching units help in evaluating learning objectives in terms of student’s performance. It also provides feed-back to teaching learning process. Pupils repeat the acquired experiences while interpreting them.

Morrison identified a five-step instructional pattern. Morrison’s general pattern for the instructional process (his plan or method) involves the following sequential steps:

(1) Pretest,

(2) Teaching,

(3) Testing the result of instruction,

(4) Changing the instruction procedure, and

(5) Teaching and testing again until the unit has been completely mastered by the student.

On the basis of the above referred pattern the following steps can be developed;

Steps Related with what aspect- Morrison analyzed the school curriculum into units of five types: Science Appreciation, Practical art, Language arts, and Pure-practice. He firmly believes that instruction would vary among the different types of units, On the basis of this analysis; a teacher gets an opportunity to study the content deeply. It cultivate a feeling of self confidence in him .This analysis ensures continuity of teaching.

Steps Related with Why aspect- Teaching objectives are those central points around which the whole teaching process revolves. Thus it is essential that the teacher identify and analyze them in consideration with learning experience and entering behavior of students.

Steps Related with How aspect-Learning is a continuous process of acquiring experiences, through which the predetermined objectives can be achieved. It is related with active aspect of teaching. Determinations of instructional methodology including strategies are come under this step.

Steps related with how much aspect- This is the final and most important step of a teaching unit. Feedback regarding quality of instruction is given in this step. .

Every teaching unit has its own structure. The structure of a unit is based on the nature of the subject-matter and the teaching objective. A teaching unit marks the contents, the subject-matter and methods of presentation.

As objectives provide the base for the determination of teaching objectives, so objectives should be kept in mind while analyzing the content. In reality, the whole content should be divided as per the objectives. It depends on the fact that how much time a teacher has, for the realization of the pre set objectives. However in day to day teaching it is not possible to analyze/ divide the whole content at one time. Thus the total content at the disposal of the teacher is divided in the form of small topics. After that required time period is determined for the realization of the objectives.

In order to inculcate more objectivity in this process a two dimensional blue print chart should be prepared. In this blue print the objective should be placed on one side and necessary time periods are on other side. This two dimensional blue print can be analyzed as per the daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis.

 

S. No	Teaching Topics	Cognitive Domain	Affective Domain	Psycho-motor   Domain	Expected Periods	Duration
—-	–	Knowledge	Receiving	Impulsion
—-	–	Understanding	Responding	Manipulation
—-	–	Application	Valuing	Control
——	–	Analysis	Conceptualization	Coordination
——	–	Synthesis	Organization	Naturalization
——	–	Evaluation	Characterization	Habit formation

 

 

After the time periods, the topics of the contents are specified. It enables a teacher to foresee the contents to be given to students, and they have to be sequenced so that their inherent mutual relationship can be preserved.

Next, the content is analyzed in terms of objectives and desirable behavioral changes. Content should be analyzed in the form of following teaching points-

 

Contents related with objectives of Cognitive Domain

Objectives	Teaching Points Related to-
Knowledge	Knowledge of Terms Knowledge of Concepts Knowledge of Principles Knowledge of processes Knowledge of relationships
Comprehension	Translation Interpretation Extrapolation
Application	Generalization Diagnosis Use in new situation
Analysis	Analysis of Elements Analysis of Relationship Analysis of organizational               principles
Synthesis	Production of unique Communication Production of proposed set of              operation

 

(ANALYSE SIMILARLY FOR OTHER DOMAINS OF INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES)

After having analyzed in the above manner, a teacher can determine the sequence of his presentation and related teaching activities. For it this process can be used. A flow chart is given here for this purpose-

State objectives in behavioral terms

Determine method of teaching

Evaluation/ Feedback

Presentation Before students

Selection of content

Thus if at the time of determining teaching units, desirable behavioral changes are kept in view and the content is divided into small topics, then attention should be given to the entering behavior of the students and the time to be taken. If these points are kept in view there is every possibility that a teacher will be successful in his teaching.

Advantages

• Habit of Healthy Study. In helps in the habit of healthy study. This makes them self-learners.
• Interesting. The interest of the pupils is emphasized. Easy acquisition of teaching objectives is preferred.
• Child Centered Method. The capacities and needs of the pupils are considered supreme.
• Psychological Method. Based on Gestalt psychology. This method gives importance the ‘whole’ instead of part.
• Development of social values. An important method of group teaching, the unit method helps in developing social values in the pupils.
• Organized learning. Learning occur in an organized from. Consequently, it becomes the permanent part of the brain.
• Encouragement to Expression of Ideas. A child centered method encourages the development of social values as well as the capacity of express ideas.
• Use of Appropriate Teaching Aids. The knowledge is imparted with the help of appropriate aid. This enables them to learn how to apply properly the teaching aid.

Limitations

• End of Originality. While using unit method; pupils are to restrict themselves. This finishes the originality of the teaching and learning.
• Waste of Time. The pupils are provided with organized and detailed knowledge. This wastes the time.
• Limited Scope. Due to the detailed Knowledge provided to the pupils, this unit –method has very limited scope.
• Mechanical Method of teaching. The freedom of the teacher is delimited so much that he fails to present his thoughts before the pupils. The learning becomes lifeless, boring and mechanical in such a situation.

• Possibility of Gaining Less Knowledge- It is possible that the pupils acquire sufficient knowledge in some subjects and insufficient knowledge in others.

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

 

“India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all”.

– Will Durant, American historian

The ideal of education has been very grand, noble and high in ancient India. Its aim, according to Herbert Spencer is the ‘training for completeness of life’ and the molding of character of men and women for the battle of life. The history of the educational institutions in ancient India shows how old is her cultural history. It points to a long history. In the early stage it is rural, not unban. British Sanskrit scholar Arthur Anthony MacDonnell (1854-1930) author of A History of Sanskrit Literature says, “Some hundreds of years must have been needed for all that is found” in her culture. The aim of education was at the manifestation of the divinity in men, it touches the highest point of knowledge. In order to attain the goal the whole educational method is based on plain living and high thinking pursued thought eternity.

As the individual is the chief concern and centre of this Education, education also is necessarily individual. It is an intimate relationship between the teacher and the pupil. The relationship is inaugurated by a religious ceremony called Upanayana. It is not like the admission of a pupil to the register of a school on his payment of the prescribed. fee. The spiritual meaning of Upanayanan, and its details inspired by that meaning, are elaborated, in many texts and explained below in the proper place. By Upanayana, the teacher,  “holding the pupil within his as in a womb, impregnated him with his spirit, and delivers him in a new birth.” The pupil is then known as Dvija, “born afresh” in a new existence, “twice born” (Satapatha Brahmana). The education that is thus begun is called by; the significant term Brahmacharya, indication that it is a mode of life, a system of practices.

This conception of education moulds its external form. The pupil must find the teacher. He must live with him as in member of his family and is treated by him in every way as his son. The school is a natural formation, not artificial constituted. It is the home of their teacher. It is a hermitage, amid surrounding, beyond the distractions of urban life, functioning in solitude and silence. The constant and intimate association between teacher and taught is vital to education as conceived in this system. The pupil is imbibing the inward method of the teacher, the secrets of his efficiency, the spit of his life and work, and these things are too subtle to be taught.

It seems in the early Vedic or Upanishad times education was esoteric. The word Upanishad itself suggests that it is learning got by sitting at the feet of the master. The knowledge was to be got, as the Bhagvad Gita says, by obeisance, by questioning and serving the teacher.

India has believed in the domestic system in both Industry and Education, and not in the mechanical methods of lager production in institutions and factories truing out standardized articles.

“A most wonderful things was notice in India is that here the forest, not the town, is the fountain head of all its civilization. Wherever in India its earliest and most wonderful manifestations are noticed we find that mean have not come into such close contact as to be rolled or fused into a compact mass. There, trees and plants, rivers and lakes, had ample opportunity to live in close relationship with men. In these forests, though there was human society, there was enough of open space, of aloofness; there was no jostling. Still it rendered it all the brighter. It is the forest that nurtured the two great ancient ages of India, the Vedic and the Buddhist. As did the Vedic Rishis, Buddha also showered his teaching in the many woods of India.

“The very word ‘Aranyaka’ affixed to some of the ancient treatises, indicates that they either originated in, or were intended to be studies in, forests.”

” He who is possessed of supreme knowledge by concentration or mind, must have his senses under control, like spirited steeds controlled by a charioteer. “says the Kaath Upanishad  from the Vedic age downwards the central conception of education of the Indians has been that it is a source of illumination giving us a correct lead in the ‘various spheres of life.’ Knowledge, says one all affairs and teaches him how to act.

It may be said that India was the only country where knowledge was systematized and where provision was made for its imparting at the highest level in ancient times. Whatever the discipline for its imparting at the highest level in ancient times. Whatever the discipline for learning, whether it was astronomy chemistry, medicine, surgery, the art of painting or sculpture, or dramatics or principles of literary criticism or mechanics or even dancing everything was reduced to a systematic whole for passing it on to the future generations in a brief and yet detailed manner. University education run almost in modern  lines existed in India as early as 800 B.C. or even earlier.

A single feature of ancient Indian or Hindu civilization is that it has been moulded and shaped in the course of its history more by religious than by political, or economic, influence. The fundamental principles of social, political, and economic life were welded into a comprehensive theory which is called Religion in Hindu Thought. The total configuration of ideals, practices, and conduct is called Dharma (Religion, Virtue or Duty ) in this ancient tradition. From the very start, they came, under the influence of their religious idea, to conceive of their country as less a geographical and material than a cultural or a spiritual possession, and to identify, broadly speaking the country with their culture. The Country was their Culture and the Culture their Country the true Country of the Spirit, the ‘ invisible church of culture’ not confirmed within physical bounds. India thus was the first country to rise to the conception of an extra-territorial nationality and naturally became the happy home of different races, each with its own ethno-psychic endowment, and each carrying its social reality for Hindus is not geographical, not ethnic, but a culture-pattern. Country and patriotism expand, as  ideals and ways of lie receive acquiescence. Thus, from the very dawn of its history has this Country of this Spirit ever expanded in extending circles, Brahmarshidesa, Brahmavarta, Aryavarta , Bharatvarsha, or Jambudvipa, Suvarnabhumi and even a Greater India beyond its geographical boundaries.

Learning in India through the ages had been prized and pursued not for its own sake, if we may so put it, but for the sake, and as a part, of religion. It was sought as the means of self-realization, as the means to the highest ends of life viz. Mukti or Emancipation. Ancient Indian education is also to be understood as being ultimately the outcome of the Indian theory of knowledge as part of the corresponding scheme of life and values. The scheme takes full account of the fact that Life includes Death and the two form the whole truth. This gives a particular Angele of vision, a sense of perspective and proportion in which the material and the moral, the physical and spiritual, the perishable and permanent interests and values of life are clearly defined and strictly differentiated. Of all the people of the worked the Indians is the most impressed and affected by the fact of death as the central fact of life. The individual’s supreme duty is thus to achieve his expansion into the Absolute, his self-fulfilment, for he is a potential God, a spark of the Divine. Education must aid in this self-fulfilment, and not in the acquisition of mere objective knowledge.

Etymologically , the Hindi word ‘Shiksha’ has been derived from the Sanskrit verb ‘Shiksh’ which mean ‘to learn’.Thus’. Thus, education mean both learing and teaching. In the Raghuvansh, the term ‘education’ has been used in these two senses. In India languages, the terms ‘Vidya’ and Jnana’ have been used as synonyms to the term ‘Shiksha’. The term ‘Vidya’ has been derived from the verb ‘Vid’ which means ‘to’ know, to find out, to learn’, but later, this was fixed for ‘curriculum’. In the beginning, four subjects were included under Vidya, but later, Manu added the fifth, called Atma Vidya, and gradually, this number rose to fourteen, which included Vedas, Vedangas, Dharma, Nyaya, Mimansa etc. Thus, ‘Vidya’ means both curriculum and learning.

The term ‘Jnana’( gyaan ) meand the same as education in its wide sense in Indian philosophy. In Indian philosophies, the term ‘Jnana’ is not used for only information or facts, though in the west, this sense is The term ‘Janja’ mean the same as education in its wider sense in Indian philosophy. In Indian philosophies, the term ‘Jnana’ is not used for only information or facts, though in the west, this sense is quite prevalent. In the Amarkosha, the terms ‘Jnana’ and ‘Vijnana’ (Vigyaan) have been distinguished saying that is reated with emancipation while ‘Vijnana’ is reated with crafts. In other words,Jjnana or knowledge is that which develops man and illuminates his path to emancipation, while whatever is leant and known in practical life is called Vijnana or science.

The Indian concept of education can be understood from the prescribed list of subject on the concept of reality.

Vidya and Avidya

The word Avidyā is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *weid-, meaning “to see” or “to know”. It is a cognate of Latin vidēre (which would turn to “video”) and English “wit”.

The terms Vidya and Avidya represent opposites.Vidya refers to knowledge,learning, and to the different sciences – ancient and modern. So Avidya would mean the opposite – ignorance, absence of learning, and illiteracy

The Mundakopanised says :

Tasmai sa uvacha ha –dve vidye veditavye eti hasma yad brahmavido vadanti, para chaivapara cha

“…..There are two kinds of knowledge worthy to be known, namely, the higher(para) and the lower (Apara).”

The lines which follow the above quotation explains that the lower knowledge consists of the Vedas, phonetics, grammar, astronomy etc. and the higher knowledge is that by which the imperishable is known

The Sanskrit words Vidya is a shortened of forms of Para Vidya. The root Vid means to know. Para Vidya is knowledge of the Absoute or spiritual knowledge.

Avidya

Apara Vidya or it shortened from Avidya is knowledge of any sector or worldly knowledge in the wider sense.

Etymologically avidya is the antithesis of knowledge, ie., the absence of knowledge. But the word is not used in the negative concept. All knowledge or Apara Vidya which envelopes the phenomenal world is turned Avidya.

Isa – Upanishad explains the idea in the following verse:

Vidyam Cha avidyam cha

Bah tad veda upayam saha

Avidyaya mrutyum tirtva

Vidyaya-amrutam-asnute

It is through Avidya that one crosses the great stream of death whicle through Vidya one attains immortality.

Thus the Upanishands make it clear that the worldly knowledge (Avidya) which though ephemeral is also of importance to the seeker, absolute knowledge (Vidya ) is of the higher self which helps him attain his goal.

The work of Avidya is to suppress the real nature of things and present something else in its place. In essence it is not different from Maya . Avidya relates to the finite Self (Sanskrit: atman) while Maya is an adjunct of the cosmic Self. In both cases it connotes the principle of differentiation which is implicit in human thinking. It stands for that delusion which breaks up the original unity  of what is real and presents it as subject and object and as doer and result of the deed. What keeps humanity captive in Samsara is this Avidya. This ignorance is not lack of erudition; it is ignorance about the nature of ‘Being’ (Sanskrit: Sat). It is a limitation that is natural to human sensory or intellectual apparatus. This is responsible for all the misery of humanity. Advaita Vedanta holds that the eradication of it should be humanity’s only goal and that will automatically mean Realisation of the Self (Sanskrit: Atman).

Adi Shankara on avidya says in his Introduction to his commentary on the Brahma Sutras, “Owing to an absence of discrimination, there continues a natural human behaviour in the form of ‘I am this’ or ‘This is mine’; this is avidya. It is a superimposition of the attributes of one thing on another. The ascertainment of the nature of the real entity by separating the superimposed thing from it is Vidya (knowledge, illumination)”. In Shankara’s philosophy Avidya cannot be categorized either as ‘absolutely existent’ or as ‘absolutely non-existent’.

As already said, there are two kinds of reality-one, of the phenomenal world and the other, usually said as a higher one of the Atman or Brahman. The former reality in comparison with the latter one is said to be of a lower order in the sense that the world attainments are only ephemeral in nature. Therefore to understand both these realities two kinds of knowledge are necessary.

In the Mundaka Upanishad, a student reverentially questions a Rishi about Truth: ‘Revered Sir, what is that by knowing which everything (in this universe) becomes known?’ (2) The Rishi begins his reply by classifying knowledge or Vidya into two categories: Para(higher) and Apara (lower). Apara Vidya refers to the four Vedas and the six accessories of Vedic knowledge (the vedaigas): phonetics, the ritual code, grammar, etymology, prosody, and astrology. The compass is clearly very wide: the process of creation, the nature of gods and goddesses and their relation to creation, the nature of the soul and of God, the rituals that procure worldly and heavenly enjoyments, and the way of release from the series of birth and death; in short, religious or scriptural knowledge and the ways of living prescribed by different religions are all subsumed under Apara Vidya. Para vidya, the Rishi informs his student, is that ‘by which the immutable Brahman (akshara) is attained’. This Brahman is imperceptible, eternal, omnipresent, imperishable, and the source of all beings. Scriptural study is Apara Vidya, secondary knowledge. To know Brahman (or God) directly and in a non-mediate fashion is the primary aim of life, and is therefore termed Para Vidya.  If the scriptures tell us about life, then what about the other sciences – physical science and technology, and the social and political sciences? They do play a very valuable role in our lives, and are classed as Apara Vidya. But they are secular sciences. What do we get through secular knowledge? Wealth, power, luxury, and pleasure, but not the bliss that results from spiritual knowledge. The Apara Vidya that comprises scriptural knowledge helps us know that this world is not the only world, that there are other divine worlds accessible to human beings. The keeping of religious injunctions and performance of scriptural activities are prescribed as means for attaining enjoyment in these higher divine worlds. But these gains are transient and ephemeral. However, if the obligatory duties prescribed by one’s faith are performed with the aim of cultivating love of God and love of people of all faiths, the performer gets his or her mind and heart purified, and can attain the realization of that immutable Brahman which secures eternal bliss.

The Upanishads remind people with dogmatic and fanatic tendencies that scriptural injunctions also lie in the domain of ‘lower knowledge’. The Mundaka Upanishadsays that people devoted to mere scriptural ritualism are ‘deluded fools’: ‘dwelling in darkness, but wise in their own conceit and puffed up with vain scholarship, [they] wander about, being afflicted by many ills, like blind men led by the blind’. They think of their way as the best and delude themselves into believing that they have attained fulfilment, and so continue to suffer the ills of life .

How does one overcome Avidya Through Vidya, for ‘through the help of Vidya one cultivates such virtues as the taste for holy company, knowledge, devotion, love, and renunciation.’ Sri Ramakrishna  explicates the nature of Avidya: ‘Avidya consists of the five elements and the objects of the five senses – form, flavour, smell, touch, and sound. These make one forget God’ .

Both Vidya and Vvidya are aspects of Maya, the cosmic power of Brahman. This power does not however affect Brahman (or Ishvara) itself. For Maya is under the control of Ishvara. But it is by Maya that human spiritual knowledge is covered. Again, it is the Vidya component of Maya that is responsible for the generation of spiritual knowledge, while Avidya, even as it covers spiritual knowledge, is the source of all secular knowledge and human discoveries.

So Avidya is nothing but human ignorance about God’s nature, by which one is perpetually deluded into doing the rounds of Samsara, the cycle of transmigration. This Avidya again is nothing but misidentification of real knowledge, which is one’s real nature. Therefore, religious scriptures ask humans to purify their heart, mind, intellect, and ego. Real human nature is pure and divine; each soul is potentially divine. Maya personifies our illusory perception. This phenomenal world is the longest dream come out of cosmic mind, of which the individual is a part.

‘According to the Advaita philosophy,’ says Swami Vivekananda, ‘there is only one thing real in the universe, which it calls Brahman; everything else is unreal, manifested and manufactured out of Brahman by the power of Maya. To reach back to that Brahman is our goal. We are, each one of us, that Brahman, that Reality, plus this Maya. If we can get rid of this Maya or ignorance, then we become what we really are.’  While lecturing on ‘The Real Nature of Man’ Swamiji dwelt upon the nature of ignorance, Avidya:

Ignorance is the great mother of all misery, and the fundamental ignorance is to think that the Infinite weeps and cries, that He is finite. This is the basis of all ignorance that we, the immortal, the ever pure, the perfect Spirit, think that we are little minds, that we are little bodies; it is the mother of all selfishness. As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate. As soon as this idea of separation comes, it opens the door to all mischief and leads to all misery . Swamiji also makes a distinction between objective knowledge that is in the domain of avidya, and para vidya, which is our very Self: ‘Knowledge is a limitation, knowledge is objectifying. He [the Atman, the Self] is the eternal subject of everything, the eternal witness in this universe, your own Self. Knowledge is, as it were, a lower step, a degeneration. We are that eternal subject already; how can we know it? It is the real nature of every man’ .

Vidya one end is attained; by Avidya, another. Thus we have heard from the wise men who taught this. He who knows at the same time both Vidya and Avidya, crosses over death by Avidya and attains immortality through Vidya. Those who follow or “worship” the path of selfishness and pleasure (Avidya), without knowing anything higher, necessarily fall into darkness; but those who worship or cherish Vidya (knowledge) for mere intellectual pride and satisfaction, fall into greater darkness, because the opportunity which they misuse is greater. In the subsequent verses Vidya and Avidya are used in something the same sense as “faith” and “works” in the Christian Bible; neither alone can lead to the ultimate goal, but when taken together they carry one to the Highest. Work done with unselfish motive purifies the mind and enables man to perceive his undying nature. From this he gains inevitably a knowledge of God, because the Soul and God are one and inseparable; and when he knows himself to be one with the Supreme and Indestructible Whole, he realizes his immortality of human life.

 

“There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won’t go. For me, India is such a place. When I first visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colours, smells, tastes, and sounds… I had been seeing the world in black & white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant Technicolor.”

Keith Bellows, National Geographic Society

 

 

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V (P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Teaching is an integral  part of the process of education. It is a system of actions intended to induce learning. Its special function is to impart knowledge, develop understanding and skill. In teaching an interaction occurs between the teacher and the students., by which the students are diverted towards the goal. Thus the sole element  of teaching is the mutual relationship or the interaction between the teacher and the students which advances the students towards the goal.

Teaching can be considered as the art of assisting another to learn  by providing the information and  appropriate situations, conditions or activities .It is an intimate contact between a more mature personality and a less mature one which is designed to further the education of later. The process by which one person helps other in the achievement of knowledge, skill and aptitudes.

ANATOMY /STRUCTURE OF TEACHING:

Teaching consists of three variables , which operate in the phases of teaching and determines the nature and format of learning conditions or situations.

 

 

 

 

 

These are classified as under:

1.      Teacher as an independent variable.

The teacher plans the role of independent variables. Students are dependent on him in the teaching process. The teacher does the planning, organizing, leading and controlling of teaching for bringing about behavioural changes in the students. He is free to perform various activities for providing learning experiences to students.

2.      Students as dependent variable.The student is required to act according to the planning and organization of the teacher. Teaching activities of the teacher influence the learning of the students.

3.      Content and methodology of presentation as intervening variables:The intervening variables lead to interaction between the teachers and the students. The content determines the mode of presentation-telling, showing and doing etc.

PHASES OF TEACHING

Teaching is a complex task. For performing this task, a systematic planning is needed.                      Teaching is to be considered in terms of various steps and the different steps constituting the process are called the phases of teaching.

The teaching can be divided into three phases:

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRE – ACTIVE PHASE OF TEACHING

In the pre-active phase of teaching, the planning of teaching is carried over. This phase includes all those activities which a teacher performs before class-room teaching or before entering the class- room.

Pre-teaching consists essentially of the planning of a lesson. The planning of lesson needs to be  seen  in  broader  terms,  not merely  the designing  of  a  lesson  plan. Planning  includes identifying the  objectives to be  achieved in terms  of  students  learning,  the  strategies and methods  to  be  adopted,  use  of  teaching aids  and  so  on.

It is the planning phase of instructional act. The foundation of this phase is set  through the establishment of some kind of goals or objectives, and discovering ways and means to achieve those objectives.

Planning is done for taking decision about the following aspects-

1) Selection of the content to be taught

2) organization of the content

3) Justification of the principles and maxims of teaching to be used

4) Selection  of the appropriate of methods of teaching

5) Decision about the preparation and usage of  evaluation tools.

Suggested activities  in the Pre-active phase of teaching-

1.      Determining  goals / objectives:  First of all, the teacher determines the teaching objectives which are then defined in terms of expected behavioral changes. Thus, he ascertains the teaching objectives and what changes he expects in the students  by achieving those objectives. These objectives are  determined according to the psychology of the pupils and needs of the school and society , In the form of entering behaviours of the pupils and  in the form of terminal behaviours of the students.

2.      Selection of the content  to be taught: After fixing the teaching objectives, the teacher makes decisions about that content which is to be presented before the pupils and as a result he wants to bring the changes in their behaviours. This decision is taken by the teacher by considering o the following points-

•          Level need and importance  of the curriculum proposed by the teacher for the students.

•          The expected  terminal behaviour of the students

•          Level and mode of motivation  be used for the students

•         Selection of appropriate instrument and methods the teacher should use to evaluate the knowledge related to the contant.

3.       Sequencing the elements of content for presentation:  After making selections regarding the contents to be presented to the students, the teacher arranges the elements of content in a logical and psychological manner, so that this arrangement of content may assist in transfer of learning.

4.        Selection about the instructional methodology  : After sequencing the contents, the teacher makes decisions regarding the proper methods and strategies by keeping in view the contents , entering behaviour  and the level of the students.

5.      How and when of teaching strategies: Decision-making regarding the teaching methods and strategies for presenting the sequenced contents to the students is not sufficient. So the teacher  should also  decide how and when he will make use of the previously selected method and strategy during the class-room teaching.

INTERACTIVE PHASE OF TEACHING

The second  phase includes  the execution  of  the plan,  where  learning experiences are provided to  students through suitable modes.

As instruction is the complex process by which learners are provided with a deliberately designed environment to interact with, keeping in focus pre-specified objective of bringing about specific desirable changes. Whether instruction  goes  in  a  classroom,  laboratory,  outdoors or  library, this environment is specifically designed by  a  teacher so that students interact with  certain specific environmental stimuli, like  natural  components (outdoor),  information from  books, certain equipment (laboratory) etc. Learning is directed in pre-determined directions to achieie certain pre-specific goals. This does not, however, mean that, in the pre-determined environment no learning other than what a teacher has decided  upon  as instructiohal objectives does not take place. The variety  of  experiences that students go through with  a teacher, among them- selves provide learning opportunities.

All those activities which are performed by a teacher after entering in a class are clubbed (to combine together) under inter-active phase of teaching. Generally these activities are concerned with the presentation and delivery of the content in a class. The teacher provides pupil verbal stimulation of various kinds, makes explanations, ask questions, listen to the student’s response and provide guidance.

The following activities are suggested for the  inclusion in the inter-active phase of teaching-

1. Sizing up of the class: As the teacher enters the classroom, first of all he perceives the size of the class. He throws his eyes on all the pupils of the class in a few moments. He comes to know the pupils who can help him in his teaching and the pupils who can create a problem for him as a result of this perception.

In the same way, the studrnts can feel the personality of the teacher . Hence, at this stage, the teacher should look like a teacher. He should exhibit of course in a veiled manner all those characteristic which are supposed to be present in a good teacher. In nut-shell the teacher should appears as an   efficient and impressive personality.

2.      Knowing the learners: After having a feeling of class-size, the teacher makes efforts to know how much the new comers or pupils have previous knowledge. He tries to know the abilities , Interests and attitudes  and academic background of learners.

The teacher starts teaching activities after diagnosing, by questioning regarding action and reaction: two types of activities are involved here in the teaching-

a.       Initiation,

b.      Response.

Both these activities are known as verbal interaction. Both these activities occur between the teacher and the students. In other words, when a teacher performs some activities, the student  reacts  or when students perform some activities, the teacher reacts  .This way the inter-action in the teaching take place.

The teachers performs the following activities in order to analyze the nature of verbal and non-verbal inter-action of teaching activities-

a.       Selection and presentation of stimuli.

b.      Feedback and reinforcement.

c.       Deployment of strategies.

a.       Selection and presentation of stimuli: The motive or new knowledge is a process of

teaching. It can be verbal or non-verbal. The teacher should be aware of the motive which would prove effective and which would not be so for a particular teaching situation.

The teacher should select the appropriate stimulus as soon as the situation arises and an effort should be made to control the undesired activities to create the situation and for desired activities.

After selecting the stimuli, the teacher should present them before the students. The teacher should present that form of the stimulus which can motivate the students for learning. During such presentation of stimuli, the teacher should keep in mind the form context and order of the stimuli.

b.      Feedback and reinforcement: Feedback or reinforcement is that condition which increases the possibility for accepting a particular response in future. In other words those conditions which increase the possibility of occurrence of a particular response are termed as feedback or reinforcement. These conditions may be of two types which are as follows-

•         Positive reinforcement:  These are the conditions which increase the possibility of recurrence of desired behavior or response.

•         Negative response: These are the conditions in which the possibility of recurrence of the undesired behavior or response is decreased, such as punishment or reprimanding etc.

Reinforcement is used for three purposes. These are –

•         For strengthening the response.

•         For changing the response, and

•         Modifying or correcting the response.

c.       Deployment of strategies: The teaching activities are directly related to the learning conditions. Therefore, at the time of interaction the teacher produces such activities and conditions by the reinforcement strategies which effect the activities of the pupils.

The development of the teaching strategies turns the pupil-teacher interaction impressive. From the very moment, the teacher starts the teaching task and till the movement, the teacher starts the teaching task and till the movement that task goes on, the verbal and non-verbal behaviours of the pupils are controlled by the reinforcement strategies and cooperates in presenting the contents in an impressive way.

In the deployment of the teaching strategies, three areas should be considered. These are –

•         Presentation of subject-matter,

•         Levels of learning.

•         Level or context of learners, their background, needs, motivation, attitudes, cooperation and opposition.

In the interactive stage, these activities are carried on not only by the teacher, but also carried on by the students. The students  also feel about the teacher and diagnose his personality as a teacher. In order to be impressed themselves and to improve the teaching, they deploy the various strategies by selecting the different stimuli.

Operations at the interactive phase

We can present the activities of the interaction through the following chart-

Teacher                                                                                        Student

P———D——–A                                                                   P———D——–A

(Perceptual)(Diagnostic)(Achievement)                         (Perceptual)(Diagnostic)(Achievement)

This second phase of teaching is concerned with the implementation and carrying out what has been planned or decided at the planning stage.It is the stage for actual teaching.

Major operations in the phase are-

1) Perception-

Interaction process demands an appropriate perception on the part of teacher as well as the studennts. When a teacher enters the class, his first activity is concerned with a parceptionof classroom climate. He tries to weigh himself ,his abilitiesfor teaching against the class group.Similarly students also tries to have perception of the abilities, behaviour and personality characteristics of the teacher.

2) Diagnosis-

A teacher tries to access the achievement level of his students with regards to their abilities, interest and aptitude. The teacher can asks several questions  to know  how far students know about the topic.

3) Reaction Process-

Under this stage teacher observes the students that how they response to the teacher’s questions. The student has to learn the proper way of reacting and responding to the various stimuli and teaching techniques presented to it. This phase is responsible for establishing appropriate verbal and non verbal class room interaction between teacher and pupils.

POST-ACTIVE PHASE OF TEACHING:

Post-teaching phase,  , is the one that involves teacher’s activities such as analysing evaluation results to determine students’ learning, especially their problems in understanding specific areas, to reflect on the teaching by self, and to decide on the necessary changes to be brought in the system in the next instructional period.

The Post-active Phase this phase concerns with the evaluation activities. This can be done in number of ways including tests or quizzes or by observing student’s reaction of questions, comments ,structures and instructured situations.

In this phase, as the teaching task sums up, the teacher asks the questions from the pupils, verbally or in written form, to measure the behaviours of the pupils so that their achievements may be evaluated correctly.

Therefore, evaluation aspect includes all those activities which can evaluate the achievements of the pupils and attainment of the objectives. Without evaluation teaching is an incomplete process. It is related with both teaching and learning. The following activities are  suggested in the post-active of teaching-

1.      Defining the exact dimensions of the changes caused by teaching.

2.      Selecting appropriate testing devices and techniques.

3.       Changing the strategies in terms of evidences gathered.

Defining the exact dimensions of the changes caused by teaching: At the end of the teaching,the teacher defines the exact dimensions of changes in the behaviours as a result of teaching, this is termed as criterion behaviour. For this the teacher compares the actual behavioural changes in the students with their expected behavioural changes. If he observes the desired behavioural changes in the maximum numbers of pupils, he concludes that his teaching strategies and tactics worked effectively with the help of which teaching objectives have been achieved.

Selecting appropriate testing devices and techniques: The teacher selects those testing devices and techniques to compare the actual behavioural changes with the desired behavioural change which are reliable and valid and which can evaluate the cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of the pupils. Therefore, criterion tests are more preferred than the performance tests.

Changing the strategies in terms of evidences gathered: While, by using the reliable and valid testing devices, the teacher gets the knowledge regarding the performances of pupils and attainment of objectives on one hand, and on the other hand he also gets clarity regarding his instruction, teaching strategies and tactics. He also comes to know about the required modification in the teaching strategies and situations along with the drawbacks of his teaching in order to achieve the teaching objectives. In this way, through evaluation, the teaching activities are diagnosed and these can be made effective by necessary modifications and changes in them.

Teaching is a complex activity. It is a process in which students are provided with a controlled environment for interaction with the purpose to. promote  a definite learning in  them.  The environment provided to students is constituted by  the content, the teacher who organizes and provides specific  learning  experiences, different  ways  and  means  of  providing  learning experiences  and  the school setting. All  these components, called instructional components, interact in an interdependent and coordinated manner, in order to bring about the pre-specified desirable changes  in  the students. It  is  this interaction between  human  and  non-human components that makes the process of teaching-learning a highly complex activity.

Teaching is viewed as a comprehensive process, and there has been a tremendous change in the way  of understanding teaching and a teacher’s roles. Teaching is conceptualized as an active interactive process that goes on between the consciously designed environment and  the student, (where teachers may  or  may  not  be present), with a definite purpose. It includes all the activities organized by a teacher to bring about learning, be it inside or outside a classroom, with or without the presence of the teacher.

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Teaching is a dynamic and well planned process to acquire maximum learning experiences. In order to achieve this great objective various methods and techniques are developed. Newer inventions are taking place in the field of instructional technology ,which occupy their own specific dignity and importance. Changes in all fields of education have resulted in new forms and assimilation of new innovations in educational technology. Therefore, all those changes means and resources which opens the new vistas of development and which have inclined educators towards new tendencies after seeding in him novel facts ,novel concepts etc need to be strengthened.    Among the many ideas and options for meeting these diverse yet somehow related challenges, one that is receiving widespread attention, is team-teaching.

Concept of Team -teaching

Team-teaching is an instructional situation where two or more teachers possessing complimentary teaching skills cooperatively plan and implement the instruction for a single group of students using flexible scheduling and grouping techniques to meet the particular instruction.

Team teaching is an organisation whereby two or more teachers with or without teaching aids , cooperatively plan instruct  evaluate one  or more class groups  in an appropriate instructional space and given length of time so as to take advantage of special competencies of the team members.

Two (or more) educators or other certified staff  to share instructional responsibility ,for a single group of students , primarily in a single classroom or workspace , for specific content (objectives) with mutual ownership, pooled resources, and joint accountability.

Team teaching is a form of organisation in which teachers decide to post resources , interests and expertise in order to devise and implement the scheme of work suitable  to the need of their students and facilities of their school.

In team teaching, both teachers are delivering the same instruction at the same time.  Some teachers refer to this as having “one brain in two bodies.”  Others call it “tag team teaching.”  Most team-teachers consider this approach the most complex but satisfying way to co-teach, but the approach that is most dependent on teachers’ styles

This implies that each speaks freely during large-group instruction and moves among all the students in the class.  Instruction becomes a conversation, not turn-taking.

The  team-teaching approach is affected more than any other by individuals’ teaching styles This is the most interpersonally complex co-teaching approach

This approach is generally used;

• When two heads are better than one or experience is comparable

• During a lesson in which instructional conversation is appropriate

• In co-teaching situations in which the teachers have considerable experience and a high sense of comfort

• When a goal of instruction is to demonstrate some type of interaction to students

• One teacher talks while the other demonstrates note-taking on the board or an overhead projector.

In the rapidly evolving world of special services and supports for students  ,terminology often becomes an issue.  For clarification, these are some terms often used in confusion with team-teaching:

Collaboration

Although it is generally preferred that co-teaching be collaborative, it might or might not be.  Collaboration generally refers to how individuals interact, not the activity they’re doing.

Thus, any activity—including co-teaching, and problem solving, consultation–may or may not be collaborative.

Co- teaching

The term team teaching is often used to describe the situation in which two general education teachers combine classes and share instruction.  In an elementary school, this might occur when two fourth grade teachers decide to open the portable that divides their rooms and teach the entire group as one.  In a secondary school, this might occur when an English teacher and a history teacher combine two classes to present a content unit.  Co-teaching is different from this type of team teaching in two important ways:  First, in co-teaching the teacher-student ratio is drastically improved.  Second, in co-teaching, two significantly different orientations toward teaching are blended.  Finally, team teaching in the middle school literature often refers to a process for planning interdisciplinary instruction, but not sharing instructional delivery.

Inclusion

Although team-teaching is integral to the inclusive practices in many schools, it is not a requirement for inclusion to occur. Inclusion refers to a broad belief system or philosophy embracing the notion that all students should be welcomed members of a learning community, that all students are part of their classrooms even if their abilities differ.

Types of Team- teaching

1. A Team Of Teachers from a Single-Department

In such classification, teachers come from a single department. This arrangement is made for secondary and higher secondary classes. It is possible only if there is more than one teacher for one subject

 

1. A team of teachers from various departments of single institution.

In this classification, a team of teachers from different subjects is formed such as teachers in psychology, philosophy and sociology etc.  Now the teaching task is organized very easily. Thus, team teaching encourages interdisciplinary teaching.

3.    A team of teachers from a single department of various institutions.

In such team teaching, specialists from various institutions are invited at every level and for every topic. This provision proves such useful where there is only one subject teacher. Such team- teaching encourages cooperative teaching. The effective use of this team-teaching becomes more possible in a city where there are more than one training institutions.

Rationale for Adopting  Team-Teaching

Here are some of the reasons experienced team-teachers provide:

1. Team-teaching is one way to deliver services to students with disabilities or other special needs as part of a philosophy of inclusive practices.  As a result, it shares many benefits with other inclusion strategies, including a reduction in stigma for students with special needs, an increased understanding and respect for students with special needs on the part of other students, and the development of a sense of heterogeneously-based classroom community.

2. In team-taught classrooms, ALL students can receive improved instruction.  This includes students who are academically gifted or talented, students who have average ability, students who are at risk for school failure as well as students with identified special needs.

3. In team-teaching, the instructional fragmentation that often occurs in other service delivery options is minimized.  Students benefit by not having to leave the classroom to receive services.  At the same time, the special service provider or other co-teacher has a better understanding of the curriculum being addressed in the classroom and the expectations for both academics and behaviour.

4. Co-teachers often report that one of the most noticeable advantages of sharing a classroom is the sense of support it fosters. Co-teachers report that when they have a spectacular lesson, someone is there to share it, and when they have a particularly challenging day, someone really knows just how difficult it was.

Requisites in a Teacher  for Team-Teaching

A teacher occupies a very important place. He is the medium who transmits the acquired knowledge to the next generation. The following are the few requisites which are expected to be in a team- teacher;

I. A Common Philosophical Belief

The members of successful team-teaching, teams share several common beliefs that constitute a philosophy or a system of principles that guide their practice.

II. Individual Prerequisite

Individual teachers voluntarily bring certain characteristics, knowledge, and skills to the team-teaching situation. Team-teachers have personal characteristics that enable them to work effectively with another teacher;   they have sets of common knowledge and skills. Team-teaching is voluntary.

III. The Professional Relationship

Team-teachers have unique professional relationships , built on parity, communication, respect, and trust. Co-teachers make a commitment to building and maintaining their professional relationship.

IV. Classroom Dynamics

The interactions in a co-taught classroom are unique to this teaching arrangement, as they clearly define classroom roles and responsibilities. Team-teachers’ instructional interactions reflect their professional relationship.

Team-teachers successfully maintain the instructional flow of the whole class by providing support to individual students. The curriculum in co-taught classes explicitly addresses academic, developmental, compensatory, and life skills and reflects the needs of students in the class. Team-teachers monitor their efforts.

V. External Supports

External support facilitates successful  team -teaching. Administrators support to team-teaching is an essentiality. Appropriate professional development activities enhance team-teaching.

Dimensions  of Team-Teaching

In most schools, team-teaching cannot exist alone as the means through which inclusive practices are implemented.  Instead, team-teaching should be one out of a wide variety of service delivery systems , that provide supports to students with special needs.  These are some of the other service delivery options that need to exist:

Consultation

In consultation, professionals skilled in working with students with special needs meet on a regular basis with teachers to problem solve.  A school psychologist, behaviour specialist, speech language therapist, or special education teacher might serve as a consultant.  By meeting to identify a problem, systematically developing an intervention, gathering data , and judging the intervention’s effectiveness, teachers and consultants can maximize student learning.

Teaming

Grade-level elementary teams (or primary -intermediate teams), middle school teams, and interdisciplinary or department  school teams meet regularly to discuss curriculum and problem solve about students.  Special educators and other support providers can join these teams to help create strategies and interventions as well as to address issues related to curricular adaptations.  This helps to make communication more consistent and more efficient.

Informal problem solving

Teachers in inclusive schools often need to meet one-to-one to proactively or reactively problem solve regarding students they share.  For example, a classroom teacher and a special education teacher might meet to discuss whether a student with an IEP who has violated a school rule should receive special consideration or be excluded from the upcoming  excursion

Instruction in a separate setting

Although the goal in an inclusive school is for most instruction to occur in general education settings, occasionally student needs indicate this is not appropriate.  Examples of situations in which instruction in a separate setting might be indicated include a student needing physical therapy that cannot be integrated into classroom routines, a student who needs highly specialized articulation therapy, and a student not learning as expected so that diagnostic teaching is needed.

Collegial staff development

A hallmark of inclusive schools is the sense that there is always new information that can help teachers  better address to student needs.  If teachers and administrators attend workshops, classes, or other staff development opportunities, they share what they have learned with colleagues.  Topics might include instructional techniques, approaches for responding to student behaviour, and strategies for promoting staff collegiality

Factors to be considered  in selecting a team-teaching approach

Team-teaching is most effective when the approaches used are deliberately selected.  Here are some  factors to weigh in selecting a team-teaching approach:

Student characteristics and needs.

The first considerations in thinking about team-teaching approaches are student characteristics and needs.  For example, if students tend to become disruptive during transitions, an approach should be selected that minimizes transitions.  Conversely, if students need extra motivation, an approach with frequent changes might be preferred.

Teacher personality and needs.

Team-teaching will be different in different classrooms and at different times of the school year based on teacher characteristics and needs.  For example, if  team-teachers vary significantly in their teaching styles, it might be best to select approaches that enable them to teach independently.  Alternatively, if team-teachers work easily together, a more shared approach might be appropriate.

Curriculum and instructional strategies.

The content to be taught and the instructional strategies that are most effective for addressing the content are additional considerations in selecting team-teaching approaches.  Highly structured content and procedures, such as teaching steps in a process, would require one approach while less structured content, such as a discussion of ideas, would suggest another approach.

Pragmatic considerations.

The preference for team-teaching approaches should also be tempered by the pragmatics of the setting.  For example, in an open school, noise is a consideration in selecting an approach.  In a crowded classroom, an approach not particularly dependent on space might be the best choice.

Team-teaching Approaches

Team – teaching approaches can be classified as follows;

One Teach, One Observe Approach .  One of the advantages in team-teaching is that more detailed observation of students engaged in the learning process can occur.  With this approach, for example, team-teachers can decide in advance what types of specific observational information to gather during instruction and can agree on a system for gathering the data.  Afterward, the teachers should analyze the information together. This approach is generally used

• In new team-teaching situations

• When questions arise about students

• To check student progress

• To compare target students to others in class assignment?

To make this approach more effective use blank NCR form or carbon paper,  make two copies of your data at once and share immediately.

Once you’re experienced team-teachers with a mutual sense of comfort, observation of each other can serve as a form of coaching

One Teach, One Drift Approach .  In a second approach to team-teaching, one teacher would keep primary responsibility for teaching while the other professional circulated through the room providing unobtrusive assistance to  students as needed. This approach is generally used

• When the lesson lends itself to delivery by one teacher

• When one teacher has particular expertise for the lesson

• In new team-teaching situations–to get to know each other

• In lessons stressing a process in which student work needs closemonitoring

This approach is not particularly useful to help focus student attention.  Instead, it has the risk of distracting students during large-group instruction.

Each teacher should have the opportunity to lead instruction and drift if this approach is used

Parallel Teaching Approach .  On occasion, student learning would be greatly facilitated if they just had more supervision by the teacher or more opportunity to respond.  In parallel teaching, the teachers are both teaching the same information, but they divide the class group and do so simultaneously.

• When a lower adult-student ratio is needed to improve instructional efficiency

• To foster student participation in discussions

• For activities such as drill and practice, re-teaching,  and test review

This approach gives each teacher an active–but separate– instructional role in the classroom. Any topic with multiple dimensions can be presented using this approach if the groups are then brought back together for discussion. Students can be strategically placed in the two groups

Station Teaching Approach .  In this team-teaching approach, teachers divide content and students.  Each teacher then teachers the content to one group and subsequently repeats the instruction for the other group.  If appropriate, a third “station” could require that students work independently. This approach is generally used

• When content is complex but not hierarchical

• In lessons in which part of planned instruction is review

• When several topics comprise instruction

For this approach to be successful;

Variations of station teacher, carried out across two days, are sometimes more appropriate in secondary settings with traditional class periods.

If students cannot work independently, two groups can be formed.  If a student teacher is available, four groups might be arranged.

Alternative Teaching Approach :  In most class groups, occasions arise in which several students need specialized attention.  In alternative teaching, one teacher takes responsibility for the large group while the other works with a smaller group. This approach is generally used

• In situations where students’ mastery of concepts taught or about to be taught varies tremendously

• When extremely high levels of mastery are expected for all students

• When enrichment is desired

• When some students are working in a parallel curriculum

For this approach to be successful, the purpose for the small group and its membership should vary

Procedure of Team –teaching:

A systematic procedure can be followed through following steps / phases-

Planning

A comprehensive plan of team- teaching is prepared keeping in view the following activities;

• Determine the objectives of team-teaching.
• Write the objectives of team-teaching in behavioural terms.
• Identify entering behaviour of the students.
• Decide the topics for teaching.
• Prepare an outline for teaching a topic.
• Assign duties to the teachers looking at the interests of the students and their skills . Determine the level of the instructions.
• Decide the evaluation techniques
• Create learning environment and instructional material.

Organisation

The following activities are suggested while organising team-teaching ;

• Teacher asks some initial questions to decide the level of the instruction. Only then can he set the level of the instruction.
• Keeping in view the student’s knowledge of the language, communication technique is selected.
• The teacher delivers lead lecture while the other member teachers of the team listen to it. They note down the important points specifically those which are difficult for the pupils to understand.
• Then other teachers of the team also deliver lectures and clarify various elements.
• Pupils’ activities are reinforced. The teacher encourages the pupils.
• The pupils are asked to perform certain tasks in the class during these lectures.

Evaluation of the result

In this step, the evaluation occurs with the reference to the achievement of objectives on the basis of performance of the pupils. It is examined whether the objectives have been achieved or not. The following activities are performed in this step:

• Decision is taken regarding the achievement of objectives and performances by the pupils.
• Necessary modifications are introduced in the planning and organization phase on the basis of evaluation.
• For evaluation, oral and written questions and practical methods are followed. Each question evaluates some objectives.
• The shortcomings and problems of the pupils are diagnosed and remedied.

The results of the evaluation phase function as reinforcement to the pupils and the teachers. Various institutions adopt the process of team teaching according to their own resources and objectives.

Suggested Topics/ Areas for Team-teaching in Education

• Planning, including time to do it and who does which part. Instructional format, including who will do which part of the instructional delivery.
• Parity or how it will be clear that both educators have the same status in the classroom.
• Space, related to both students and teachers.  Noise and each educator’s tolerance for it.
• Instructional routines. Organizational routines. Confidentiality
• Discipline procedures for the classroom. Safety matters . Instructional content and expectations for students
• Feedback, including when and how to discuss issues with each other.
• Student evaluation, including grading.  Teaching chores such as grading, duplicating, assignment preparation, and so on.
• Responsibilities and procedures for substitutes.

 

Some Other Important Considerations in Team-teaching

Below are some important dynamics of team-teaching which needs serious consideration

Parity among Team-teachers ;

The most important factor responsible for the success or failure of team-teaching is parity among team-teachers. If not properly established it will lead to dirty competition, which will ruin the entire concept of team work. You and your team-teaching partner must convey to students that their teaching relationship is truly collaborative, that it is a partnership based on parity?  The following checklist might help , to think through ideas about how you, your teaching partner, and students can observe parity or its absence.

• . Both teachers’ names on board.
• . Both teachers’ names on report cards.
• . Both teachers’ handwriting on student assignments.
• . Both teachers with space for personal belongings.
• . Both teachers with adult-size furniture.
• . Both teachers with a lead role in the classroom.
• . Both teachers talk during instruction.
• . Both teachers give directions or permission without checking with the other teacher.
• . Both teachers work with all students.
• . Both teachers are considered teachers by the students

Making  Collaboration for Team- teaching

Majority of professionals express concern about the time needed to form collaborative working relationships with their colleagues, particularly for activities such as team-teaching.  They also worry about setting realistic expectations regarding time for collaboration .Here are some of the ways– professionals are making the most of the time:

• Have two classes team to release one teacher
• Use other adults to help cover classes–including principals, assistant principals, counselors, social workers, volunteers, paraprofessionals, psychologists, and supervisors.  Of course, be sure to follow local policies on who can supervise groups of students.
• Find funds for substitute teachers–some sources include grants from your state or local foundations, parent-teacher organizations, and disability advocacy groups.
• Find “volunteer” substitutes–retired teachers, members of social organizations, teacher trainees from local universities
• Use instructionally relevant videotapes or other programs supervised by part of the staff to release the other part of the staff for planning.
• When school-based staff development sessions are scheduled, arrange for them to begin late or conclude early with the saved time being used to collaboration
• Experiment with a late arrival or early dismissal day.  This time can occur once per week, once per month, or once per grading period.  Typically, the school day is lengthened and the additional minutes are “banked” to provide the release.  The time thus created must be used in working with colleagues.  It is not additional individual preparation time nor is it time to be spent on large-group, formal meetings.
• Stay late after school once per month, but make it enjoyable by bringing snacks, flowers, music, or other pleasant “atmosphere” items.
• Treat collaboration as the equivalent of school committee responsibilities, especially if you are operating a pilot program.  Time that others in school spend in committee meetings is spent working collaboratively.
• In elementary schools, divide labour for instruction to save time. That is, have each teacher take the lead for preparing materials for different lessons, making enough copies for all involved.
• Reduce other work to have time to meet–for example, have students correct each others’ work or create self-correcting materials.
• For special educators, reserve time in the daily schedule that is not obligated to specific responsibilities.  Use this time flexibly with lunch, planning, and other time to meet with teachers

How Many Students with Special Needs Should Be in a Team-teaching Class?

One very common question concerning team-taught classes concerns the proportion of students with  special needs assigned to such classes.  Although is no single right answer to the question of how many students, here are a few ideas to keep in mind:

• In an elementary school or a small secondary school, all students with disabilities are sometimes grouped into a single section, classroom, or team.  .  Generally, it is inappropriate to group students with disabilities in this manner, unless student needs are very mild and behaviour is not a problem.

• In some schools, a decision is made that everyone should participate in the education of students with special needs.  In these schools, the approach used is “one for you, one for you, one for you,” with students being distributed equally across classes or sections.  This approach has a tremendous risk of making it virtually impossible for special service providers to adequately address or even monitor student needs.

• One effective strategy for distributing students is to have teachers at a grade level or on a team, or the special education teachers assign students based on their knowledge of the students and their classmates.

• In secondary schools, it sometimes happens that team-taught classes receive a disproportionately high number of students at risk, the logic being that with two teachers these students will have a better educational experience.  The problem with this approach is that it may result in a de facto segregated class being formed, one that looks very similar to a traditional special education class.  Students do not have positive role models when this occurs, and the philosophy of inclusive practices is undermined

• Professional common sense is the most logical way to make decisions about the number of students with disabilities or other special needs to place in a team-taught class.  If a student with a moderate or severe disability is enrolled, the class should not also have several students with significant behaviour challenges.  If several students with learning disabilities are similar in need, it might be best if they are placed in the same location so that services can more readily be delivered.

• In addition to students with disabilities, students at-risk also should be considered in determining class composition.  Just a few students with significantly higher needs than other students can affect the learning standards.  The goal is to maintain the standard for most learners while making needed accommodations for students who need them.

• Yet another consideration in assigning students for team-taught classes concerns students receiving assistance through other programs.  .  Generally, students should not be grouped into classes on the basis of services received.  However, the number and intensity of all services in a classroom is a factor to review when assigning students.

How Much Team-Teaching Should One Special Service Provider Do?

Special service providers, including special education teachers, school psychologists, social workers, counsellors, occupational therapists, speech/language therapists, and reading specialists, sometimes wonder what a reasonable amount of team-teaching is. They ask how many different classrooms they should be expected to support through team-teaching.  Here are a few ideas related to this topic:

• If team-teaching is a new service delivery option, it is better to implement it on a small scale–even in a single classroom setting- -rather than to attempt a broad-based initial program.  Team-teaching typically requires the educators involved to re-visit and re-think some of the most essential beliefs they have about teaching and learning.  Expecting this to occur throughout a school or even in several classrooms at the outset is not realistic.

• Experiences team-teachers report that they are able to truly Team -teach in four-to-six classrooms at any one time.  If they need to provide services in additional classrooms, team-teaching is not used.  Instead, some type of more limited support  is provided in some classrooms.

• In an inclusive school, all special service providers should have opportunities to team-teach, even teachers or others who are in so called “self-contained” settings.  Staff members, with administrative support, should identify times for this type of team-teaching to occur.  It might be for a limited amount of time each week, or it might be for a limited part of the school year.

• Amount of team-teaching is strongly affected by other role responsibilities.  A school psychologist with significant responsibility for assessing students and preparing reports clearly cannot spend large period of time co-teaching.  Special education teachers with large workloads or responsibilities for other meetings likewise will be limited in their availability for team-teaching

Willing participation is an essentiality

Even experienced team-teachers indicate that team-teaching should only occur if both individuals participate willingly. Although this idea has intuitive appeal, the matter is somewhat more complicated.  Here are a few questions to consider:

• In new programs, it is understandable to use volunteers.  The professionals who take the risks to develop the program and work out the various challenges that will occur should be those who do so willingly.

• A teacher who is reluctant to work with a colleague may have valid reasons.  However, if a teacher does not want to participate because of not wanting to work with certain students or not wanting to share instruction, a serious problem exists.

• team-teaching should be arranged when students need this rather intensive, in-class service delivery option.  If it is based on student need, care should be taken that teacher preferences are kept in an appropriate perspective.

• In some elementary schools, principals have moved teachers to different grade levels because of the need to establish team-teaching at their original level.  In high schools, some teachers have lost preferred schedules because of the need to have co-teaching during certain class periods in certain subjects

Limitations of Team-teaching

Costly method. Team-teaching is costlier than the traditional teaching. Its per head cost is more than that of the traditional teaching

Requires more accommodation. More rooms and furniture is required in team-teaching in comparison to the traditional teaching. Hence due to scarcity of space and building, the effectiveness of the team-teaching becomes doubtful

Lack of cooperation. The basis of the team-teaching is cooperation. But  sometimes teachers hastate to cooperate with other teachers.

Lack of research work. Being a new concept, team-teaching lacks research backup. It is being used on the basis of trial and error.

Variation in the roles of teachers. If the different teachers have different roles it increases the load of team-teaching members. One teacher considers the others role as a hurdle. In such conditions the teachers face tough time to maintain the balance and coordination.

Diversification in the views of teachers. When different teachers work together , it become difficult to eliminate diversifications in their views. Unification in their ideas becomes very difficult.

Conflict between change and tradition. There is always a possibility of conflict between new and traditional methods . New methods have created unrest and panic among traditional teachers who try to resist these changes.

 

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

 

When the lotus opens, the bees come of their own accord to seek honey so let the lotus of your character be full blown and the results will follow.

A society is forever adding to its learning and culture., Education was but a manifestation of culture. The purpose of education, it seems, is to transmit culture: so culture is likely to be limited to what can be transmitted by education. ’Similarly, Vivekananda observed that, through education, a child learns a culture and his behavior is molded accordingly, and he is thus guided towards his eventual role in society. In this process, several agents – such as his parents, peers and teachers – assist him

 

Vevekanand agrees with his teacher Sri Ramkrishan Paramhansa“Life is monetary. Do not care for doctrines; do not care for dogmas to sects or churches or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in man. Be spiritual and realise the truth for yourself. Criticize no one, for all doctrines and creeds have some good in them. These were words of immortal wisdom uttered by Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa. Today man has forgotten his divine nature through his growing dependence on material positions and has been reduced to mere money making machine. It is high time we recalled the gospels of Sri Ram Krishna Paramhansa and practice even a bit of it in our lives.

 

“Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way”. Swami Vivekananda

“The Vedanta metaphysics in which Vivekananda strongly believes hold that, every soul is destined to be perfect, and every being, in the end, will attain a state of perfection. Whatever we are now is the result of ones acts and thoughts in the past; and whatever one shall be in the future will be the result of what one think and do now. But this, the shaping of our own destinies does not preclude our receiving help from outside; nay, in the vast majority of cases such help is absolutely necessary. When it comes, the higher powers and possibilities of the soul are quickened, spiritual life is awakened, growth is animated, and man becomes holy and perfect in the end.

This quickening impulse cannot be derived from books. The soul can only receive impulses from another soul, and from nothing else. We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we find that we have not developed at all spiritually. It is not true that a high order of intellectual development always goes hand in hand with a proportionate development of the spiritual side in man. In studying books we are sometimes deluded into thinking that thereby we are being spiritually helped; but if we analyze the effect of the study of books on ourselves, we shall find that at the utmost it is only our intellect that derives profit from such studies, and not our inner spirit.

This inadequacy of books to quicken spiritual growth is the reason why, although almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual matters, when it comes to action and the living of a truly spiritual life, we find ourselves so awfully deficient. To quicken the spirit, the impulse must come from another soul.” Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success”.

Swami Vivekananda

The person from whose soul such impulse comes is called the Guru – the teacher; and the person to whose soul the impulse is conveyed is called the Shishya – the student. To convey such an impulse to any soul, in the first place, the soul from which it proceeds must possess the power of transmitting it, as it were, to another; and in the second place, the soul to which it is transmitted must be fit to receive it. The seed must be a living seed, and the field must be ready ploughed. And when both these conditions are fulfilled, a wonderful growth of genuine religion takes place.

Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
Swami Vivekananda.

 

But nowadays, as formal education has become more and more institutionalized,

Teachers are expected to play a more significant role. A teacher needs to help a student learn how to think, what to think, how to discriminate and how to appreciate things. This is not just a matter of intellectual manipulation. This kind of teaching requires moral conviction and the courage to continuously pursue one’s own course at all costs “ Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin; to say that you are weak, or others are weak.”Swami Vivekananda.

 

The teacher must not only possess the knowledge he is to transmit to the student, but he must also know how to transmit it. And, in addition to the content

Of the teaching, what the teacher gives or transfers, to be truly effective, must possess some other elements. For instance, the teacher should share with the student the conviction

That they are both truly one in Spirit – at the same time cultivating in the student a feeling of dignity and self-respect. As Vivekananda said: The only true teacher is he who can immediately come down to the level of the student ,and transfer his soul to the student’s soul and see through the student’s eyes and hear through His ears and understand through his mind. Such a teacher can really teach and none else (CW,vol. IV, p. 183).In a favorable ambience such as this ‘the process of uncovering’ the veil of ignorance works smoothly (CW, vol. I, p. 28).” All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark”.
Swami Vivekananda

 

The old system of education in India was very different the modern system. The students had not to pay. It was thought that knowledge is so sacred that no man ought to sell it. Knowledge should be given freely and without any price. The teachers used to take students without charge and not only so, most of them gave their students food and clothes ,to support these teachers, the wealthy families made gifts to them and they in their turn had to maintain their students. The disciple of old used to repair the hermitage of the Guru, fuel in hand, and the Guru, after ascertaining his competence, would teach him , fastening round his waist the threefold filament of Munja, a kind of grass as the emblem of his vow to keep his body, min and speech in control.

 

In regard to the teacher, we must see that he knows the spirit of the scriptures. The whole world  reads Bibles, Vedas and Korans ; but – they are all only words, syntax, etymology, philology the dry bones of religion. The teacher who deals too much in words and allows the mind to be carried away by the force-of word loses the spirit. It is the knowledge of the spirit of the scriptures alone that constitutes the true teacher.

.

The function of the teacher is indeed an affair of the transference of something and not one of mere stimulation of existing intellectual or other faculties in the taught. Something real and appreciable as an influence comes from the teacher and goes to the taught. Therefore, the teacher must be pure.

The third condition is in regard to the motive. The teacher must not teach with any ulterior selfish motive, for money, name or fame.

 

His work must be simply out of love, out of pure love for mankind at large. The only medium through which spiritual force can be transmitted is love. Any selfish motive, such as the desire for gain or name, will immediately destroy the conveying medium.

 

The rich understand truth much less than the poor people.The rich man has no time to think of anything beyond his wealth and power, his comforts and

indulgences. I do not trust the man who never weeps ; he has a big block of granite where his heart should be. Therefore knowing what prosperity means and what happiness means, one should give up these and seek to know the truth and truth alone .Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not

the patience to practice it. It is more paying fromthe point of view of health also. Love, truth and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power. Self-restraint is a manifestation of greater power than all outgoing action. All outgoing energy following a selfish motive is frittered away ; it will not cause power to return to you ; but if restrained, it will result in development of power. This self-control will tend to produce a mighty will, a character which makes a Christ or a Buddha.

 

The teacher must throw his whole force into the tendency of the taught. Without real sympathy we can never teach well. Do not try to disturb the faith of any man. If you can, give him something better, but do not destroy what he has. The only true teacher is he who can convert himself, as it were, into a thousand persons at a moment’s notice. The true teacher is he who can immediately come down to the level of the student, and transfer his soul to the student’s soul and see through and understand through his mind. Such a teacher can really teach and none else.

In regard to the teacher, we must see that he knows the spirit of the scriptures. The whole world reads Bibles, Vedas and Korans; but they are all only words, syntax, etymology, philology, the dry bones of religion. The teacher who deals too much in words, and allows the mind to be carried away by the force of the words, loses the spirit. It is the knowledge of the spirit of the scriptures alone that constitutes the true religious teacher. The network of the words of the scriptures is like a huge forest, in which the human mind often loses itself and finds no way out.

“The various methods of joining words, the various methods of speaking in beautiful language, the various methods of explaining the diction of the scriptures are only for the disputations and enjoyment of the learned. They do not conduce to the development of spiritual perception.”

Those who employ such methods to impart religion to others, are only desirous to show off their learning, so that the world may praise them as great scholars. You will find that no one of the great teachers of the world ever went into these various explanations of the texts. There is with them no attempt at “text-torturing”, no eternal playing upon the meaning of words and their roots. Yet they nobly taught, while others who have nothing to teach, have taken up a word sometimes and written a three-volume book on its origin, on the man who used it first, and on what that man was accustomed to eat, and how long he slept, and so on “The true preacher of religion has to be of wonderful
capabilities, and clever shall his bearer be.” and when both of these are really wonderful and extraordinary, then will a splendid spiritual awakening result, and not otherwise. Such alone are the real teachers, and such alone are also the real students, the real aspirants. All others are only playing with spirituality. They have just a little curiosity awakened, just a little intellectual aspiration kindled in them, but are standing on the outward fringe of the horizon of religion.

There is no doubt, some value even in that, as it may, in course of time, result in the awakening of a real thirst for religion; and it is a mysterious law of nature that, as soon as the field is ready, the seed must and does come; as soon as the soul earnestly desires to have religion, the transmitter of the religious force must and does appear to help that soul. When the power that attracts the light of religion in the receiving soul is full and strong, the power that answers to that attraction and sends in light does come as a matter of course.

There are still greater dangers in regard to the transmitter, the teacher. There are many, who, though immersed in ignorance, yet, in the pride of their hearts, fancy they know everything, and not only do not stop there, but offer to take others on their shoulders; and thus the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch.

From Katha Upanishad, I.ii.5: “Fools dwelling in darkness, wise in their own conceit, and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind.”The world is full of these. Every one wants to be a teacher. Every beggar wants to make a gift of a million dollars! Just as these beggars are ridiculous, so are these teachers.

How are we to know the teacher then? The sun requires no torch to make him visible. We need not light a candle in order to see him. When the sun rises, we instinctively become aware of the fact, and when a teacher of men comes to help us, the soul will instinctively know that truth has already begun to shine upon it. Truth stands on its own evidence. It does not require any other testimony to prove it true; it is self-effulgent. It penetrates into the innermost corners of our nature, and in its presence, the whole universe stands up and says, “This is truth”.

The teachers whose wisdom and truth shine like the light of the sun are the very greatest the world has known, and they are worshipped as God by the major portion of mankind. But we may get help from comparatively lesser ones also; only we ourselves do not possess intuition enough to judge properly of the man from whom we receive teaching and guidance. So there ought to be certain tests, certain conditions, for the teacher to satisfy, as there are also for the taught.

“The network of words is a big forest; it is the cause of a curious wandering of the mind.”Another condition necessary in the teacher is – sinless the question is often asked, “Why should we look into the character and personality of a teacher? We have only to judge of what he says, and take that up.” This is not right. If a man wants to teach me something of dynamics, of chemistry, or any other physical science, he may be anything he likes, because what the physical sciences require is merely intellectual equipment; but in the spiritual sciences it is impossible from first to last that there can be any spiritual light in the soul that is impure. What religion can an impure man teach? The sine qua non of acquiring spiritual truth for one’s self, or for imparting it to others, is the purity of heart and soul. A vision of God, or a glimpse of the beyond, never comes until the soul is pure.

Hence with the teacher of religion we must see first what he is, and then what he says. He must be perfectly pure, and then alone comes the value of his words, because he is only then the true “”transmitter”. What can he transmit if he has not spiritual power in himself? There must be the worthy vibration of spirituality in the mind of the teacher, so that it may be sympathetically conveyed to the mind of the taught. The function of the teacher is indeed an affair of the transference of something, and not one of mere stimulation of the existing intellectual or other faculties in the taught. Something real and appreciable as an influence comes from the teacher and goes to the taught. Therefore the teacher must be pure.

Another essential condition is in regard to the motive. The teacher must not teach with any ulterior selfish motive – for money, name or fame. His work must be simply out of love, out of pure love for mankind at large. The only medium through which spiritual force can be transmitted is love. Any selfish motive, such the desire for gain or for name, will immediately destroy this conveying medium. God is love, and only he who has known God as love, can be a teacher of godliness and God to man.

When you see that in your teacher these conditions are all fulfilled, you are safe. If they are not, it is unsafe to allow yourself to be taught by him, for there is the great danger that, if he cannot convey goodness to your heart, he may convey wickedness. This danger must by all means be guarded against.

“He who is learned in the scriptures, sinless, unpolluted by lust, and is the greatest knower of the Brahman (Supreme Reality)” is the real teacher.”

From what has been said, it naturally follows that we cannot be taught to love, appreciate and assimilate religion everywhere and by everybody. The “books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything” is all very true as a poetical figure; but nothing can impart to a man a single grain of truth unless he has the undeveloped germs of it in himself. A blind man may go to a museum, but he will not profit by it in any way; his eyes must be opened first, and then alone he will be able to learn what the things in the museum can teach.

This eye-opener of the aspirant after religion is the teacher. With the teacher, therefore, our relationship is the same as that between an ancestor and his descendant. Without faith, humility, submission, and veneration in our hearts towards our religious teacher, there cannot be any growth of religion in us; and it is a significant fact that, where this kind of relation between the teacher and the taught prevails, there alone gigantic spiritual men are growing; while in those countries which have neglected to keep up this kind of relation, the religious teacher has become a mere lecturer, the teacher expecting his five dollars and the person taught expecting his brain to be filled with the teacher’s words, and each going his own way after this much has been done. Under such circumstances spirituality becomes almost an unknown quantity. There is none to transmit it, and none to have it transmitted to. Religion with such people becomes business. They think they can obtain it with their dollars. Would to God that religion could be obtained so easily! But unfortunately it cannot be.

Religion which is the highest knowledge and the highest wisdom cannot be bought, nor can it be acquired from books. You must thrust your head into all the corners of the world, you may explore the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Caucasus, you may sound the bottom of the sea, and pry into every nook of Tibet and the desert of Gobi, you will not find it anywhere until your heart is ready for receiving it and your teacher has come. And when that divinely appointed teacher comes, serve him with childlike confidence and simplicity, freely open your heart to his influence, and see in him God manifested. Those who come to seek truth with such a spirit of love and veneration, to them the Lord of Truth reveals the most wonderful things regarding truth, goodness and beauty.
One day when Narendra(Narendra was Swami Vivekananda’s name before taking sanyas) was on the ground floor, meditating, the Master (Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa) was lying awake in his bed upstairs. In the depths of his meditation Narendra felt as though a lamp were burning at the back of his head. Suddenly he lost consciousness. It was the yearned-for, all-effacing experience of nirvikalpa samadhi, when the embodied soul realises its unity with the Absolute.

After a very long time he regained partial consciousness but was unable to find his body. He could see only his head. “Where is by body?” he cried. The elder Gopal entered the room and said, “Why, it is here, Naren!” But Narendra could not find it. Gopal, frightened, ran upstairs to the Master. Sri Ramakrishna only said: “Let him stay that way for a time. He has worried me long enough.”

After another long period Narendra regained full consciousness. Bathed in peace, he went to the Master, who said: “Now the Mother has shown you everything. But this revelation will remain under lock and key, and I shall keep the key. When you have accomplished the Mother’s work you shall find the treasure again.”

Some days later, Narendra being alone with the master, Sri Ramakrishna looked at him and went into samadhi. Narendra felt the penetration of a subtle force and lost all outer consciousness. Regaining presently the normal mood, he found the Master weeping.

Sri Ramakrishna said to him: “Today I have given you my all and I am now only a poor fakir, possessing nothing. By this power you will do immense good in the world, and not until it is accomplished will you return.”

Henceforth the Master lived in the disciple

 

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Action research is known by many other names, including participatory research, collaborative inquiry, emancipator research, action learning, and contextual action research, but all are variations on a common theme. In nut shell, action research is “ Research in Action ” – a group of people identify a problem, do something to resolve it, see how successful their efforts were, and if not satisfied, try again.

Kurt Lewin, a German social psychologist, has been credited with the development of the idea of action research. He first found that experimental methods, in many cases, were inadequate and unsatisfactory. He then tried to seek for a method that based on people’s real world experience; from that time on, action research has entered the world of researchers.

According to Kurt Lewin , action research is “a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action”; this type of research uses “a spiral step,” each of which is “composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action”.

A more succinct definition is, is given by Thomas Gilmore, - ”Action research…aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to further the goals of social science simultaneously.  Thus, there is a dual commitment in action research to study a system and concurrently to collaborate with members of the system in changing it, in what is together regarded as a desirable direction. Accomplishing this twin goal requires the active collaboration of researcher and client, and thus it stresses the importance of co-learning as a primary aspect of the research process.”

O’Brien’s states that “action research is a natural way of acting and researching at the same time”. To make it clearer, Dick affirms that action research is a true reflection of its names as it is intended to achieve both action and research at the same time. It is critically suitable for educational situations where teachers wish to bring about action in the form of change or improvement in their teaching and at the same time develop an understanding which informs the change and is an addition to what is known.

Carr and Kemmis put the definition of action research in education as “action research is a form of self-reflective inquiry that can be utilized by teachers in order to improve the rationality and justice of (i) their own practices, (ii) their understanding of these practices and (iii) the situations in which these practices are carried out.

Obviously, the role of action research in education has been acknowledged  when Hutchinson and Lomax claim that action research is a research that “concerns with broader curriculum issues, and often with the administration and management of school and institutional change.

Fundamental research and Action research

Several attributes separate action research from other types of research.  Primary is its focus on turning the people involved into research, to learn best, and more willingly apply what they have learned, when they do it themselves.  It also has a social dimension – the research takes place in real-world situations, and aims to solve real problems.  Finally, the initiating researcher, unlike in other disciplines, makes no attempt to remain objective, but openly acknowledges their bias to the other participants.

Difference between Fundamental research and Action research

Areas	Fundamental Research	Action research
Aims	Search new facts and establish universal truths	Look for solution to the prevalent school/ educational problems
Area of problem	Conductive in the context of general circumstances in the field of education	Problems related to specific school
Nature of problem	Theoretical and wide	Practical and narrow
Sample	Large and gathered from outside	Limited and gathered only from the related school.
Outcome/ Result	Can be used universally	Related to the specific school
Time	Unlimited, can work life long	Limited, maximum 1 session
Research procedure	Rigid, technical knowledge required	Flexible, no technical knowledge required
Investigator	Anyone, not necessary of the school	Teachers belongs to the same school
Collection of Data	Authentic tools are used	Teacher made tests are used
Analysis of data	Complex statistics are used	General statistics are used.

Action Research in a Research Paradigm

Positivist Paradigm

Logical Positivism is the main research paradigm. This paradigm is based on principle of objective reality, knowledge of which is only gained from sense data that can be directly experienced and verified between independent observers.  Phenomena are subject to natural laws that humans discover in a logical manner through empirical testing, using inductive and deductive hypotheses derived from a body of scientific theory. Its methods rely heavily on quantitative measures, with relationships among variables commonly shown by mathematical means.

Interpretive Paradigm

Interpretive Paradigm is based on the relationship between socially-engendered concept formation and language.  Containing such qualitative methodological approaches as phenomenology, ethnography, and hermeneutics, it is characterized by a belief in a socially constructed, subjectively-based reality, one that is influenced by culture and history

Paradigm of Praxis

Praxis, a term used by Aristotle, is the art of acting upon the conditions one faces in order to change them.  It deals with the disciplines and activities predominant in the ethical and political lives of people. Aristotle contrasted this with theories – those sciences and activities that are concerned with knowing for its own sake.  Both are equally needed he thought.  That knowledge is derived from practice, and practice informed by knowledge, in an ongoing process, is a cornerstone of action research.

Action Research in Education

Action research is actually suitable for any person or any group or organization who wishes to improve his  performance; As a matter of fact, action research is widely used in education, especially by teachers who use it to improve their teaching. Obviously, action research well matches with education and benefits both teachers and a student in their teaching and learning since it meets the need of education and enables continuity in research.

Action research is used in real situations, , since its primary focus is on solving real problems.  It can, however, be used by social scientists for preliminary or pilot research, especially when the situation is too ambiguous to frame a precise research question.  Mostly, though, in accordance with its principles, it is chosen when circumstances require flexibility, the involvement of the people in the research, or change must take place quickly or holistically.

Carr and Kemmis pay much attention to the purposes of action research when they define it as “a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices and the situations in which the practices are carried out”.

Burns acknowledges action research as an influential tool for school and classroom investigation. He claims that purposes of action research in education fall broadly into categories that reflect action research as:

• A means of remedying problems in a specific situations or somewhat improving a given set of circumstances.
• A means of in-service training by equipping the teachers with new skills and methods, sharpening analytical powers and heightening self-awareness.
• A means of injecting additional or innovatory approaches to teaching and learning into an ongoing system which normally inhibits innovation and change.
• A means of improving the normally poor communications between the practising teachers and the academic researchers and of remedying the failure of traditional research to give clear prescriptions.
• A means of providing a preferable alternative to the more subjective, impressionistic approach to problem-solving in the classroom.

Glickman says that action research in education setting is a study conducted by teacher researchers to improve problems in their classrooms. In addition, Calhoun  explains action research as a fancy research when she says that “let’s study what’s happening in our school and decide how to make it a better place”.

Traditionally, research in education intends to bring useful changes to either teachers’ teaching or students’ learning or both. Educators as teacher researchers often wish to carry out research within their classrooms or schools to improve their teaching, to assess a newly developed educational theory or to implement and evaluate an educational plan.

According to Hopkins a basis for the selection of a classroom research by teachers is based on the following criteria:

i)  The teacher’s primary role is to teach and any research project must not interfere with or disrupt this commitment;

ii)  The method of data collection should not be too demanding on the teacher’s time;

iii)  The methodology used must be reliable enough to allow teachers to formulate hypotheses confidently and develop strategies applicable to the classroom situation;

iv)  The teacher should be committed to the research problem under study;

v)  Teachers must follow ethical procedures when carrying out research;

vi) Classroom research where possible should adopt a perspective where all members of a school community build and share a common vision.

In teaching as research, teacher researchers have adopted term “action research” to refer to their particular approach to classroom research. So far, action research has proved its suitability to education and become more and more important in education organizations.

Areas of action research in education

The problems related to education are originated in the school. Therefore  the problem of action research in education is only related with the following fields:-

1. Teaching practices: This field pertains to actual class teaching. The problems are related with instructional technology i.e. method, teaching aids, homework and other resources.
2. Behavioral Problems: The ultimate aim of education is to bring desirable behavioral changes in the students. Sometimes, some students can start doing some abnormal behavior. The problems pertaining to this aspect fall under this field
3. Co-Curricular Activities: co-curricular activities are integral part of curriculum. The problem confronted is the inadequate application of them in school.
4. Administration and organization: Having a healthy environment in the school is a special need today. This is why the solution relates to the problems in this area is very important. 
5. Evaluation: Evaluation is an important part of the teaching process. Valid and reliable evaluation is the need of the day. The problems pertaining to testing falls under this area.

Principles / Components of Action Research

Borgia and Schuler describe components of action research as the “Five C’s”:

Commitment: Time commitment should be carefully considered by participants of action research since it takes them time to get acquaintance with other participants, think about change, try new approach, collect data, interpret results, etc.

Collaboration: In an action research all participants are equal to each others in terms of giving ideas, suggestions or anything that leads to success of the change.

Concern: In the research process, participants will build up a group of “critical friends” who trust each other and the value of the project.

Consideration: As it is mentioned above, reflective practice is a review of a professional research like action research. It demands concentration and careful consideration as one seeks patterns and relationships that will create meaning within the investigation.

Change: For humans, especially teachers, change is continuing and it is a significant element in remaining their effectiveness.

Winter (1989) provides a comprehensive overview of six key principles.

1) Reflexive critique

Truth in a social setting is relative to the teller.  The principle of reflective critique ensures people reflect on issues and processes and make explicit the interpretations, biases, assumptions and concerns upon which judgments are made.  In this way, practical accounts can give rise to theoretical considerations.

2) Dialectical critique

Reality, particularly social reality, is consensually validated, which is to say it is shared through language.  Phenomena are conceptualized in dialogue; therefore a dialectical critique is required to understand the set of relationships both between the phenomenon and its context, and between the elements constituting the phenomenon.  .

3) Collaborative Resource

Participants in an action research project are co-researchers.  The principle of collaborative resource presupposes that each person’s ideas are equally significant as potential resources for creating interpretive categories of analysis, negotiated among the participants.  It strives to avoid the skewing of credibility stemming from the prior status of an idea-holder

4) Risk

The change process potentially threatens all previously established ways of doing things, thus creating psychic fears among the practitioners.  One of the more prominent fears comes from the risk to ego stemming from open discussion of one’s interpretations, ideas, and judgments.  Initiators of action research will use this principle to allay others’ fears and invite participation by pointing out that they, too, will be subject to the same process, and that whatever the outcome, learning will take place.

5) Plural Structure

The nature of the research embodies a multiplicity of views, commentaries and critiques, leading to multiple possible actions and interpretations.  This plural structure of inquiry requires a plural text for reporting.  This means that there will be many accounts made explicit, with commentaries on their contradictions, and a range of options for action presented.  A report, therefore, acts as a support for ongoing discussion among collaborators, rather than a final conclusion of fact.

6) Theory, Practice, Transformation

For action researchers, theory informs practice, practice refines theory, in a continuous transformation.  In any setting, people’s actions are based on implicitly held assumptions, theories and hypotheses, and with every observed result, theoretical knowledge is enhanced.  The two are intertwined aspects of a single change process.  It is up to the researchers to make explicit the theoretical justifications for the actions, and to question the bases of those justifications.  The ensuing practical applications that follow are subjected to further analysis, in a transformative cycle that continuously alternates emphasis between theory and practice.

Types of Action Research

The main ‘streams’ that had emerged by the mid-1970s are as follows:

Traditional Action Research-Traditional action research is originated from Lewin’s work within organizations. It tends toward conservative, general maintaining the status quo with regards to organization power structures. “The growth importance of labour-management relation led to the application of action research in area of organization development

Contextual Action Research (Action Learning) – “Contextual action research, also known as action learning, is stemmed from Trist’s work on relations between organizations. This approach stresses on participants’ act as project designers or co-researchers and structural relations among actors in a social environment (context)”.

Radical Action Research- “Radical action research has its roots in Marxian “dialectical materialism” and it centres on emancipation and the overcoming of power imbalances”. The two branches of this school is Participatory Action Research and Feminist Action Research

Educational Action Research-“Educational action research is founded after John Dewey, an American educational philosopher, who held that professional educators should become involved in community problem-solving”. Naturally, it concentrates on development of curriculum, professional improvement, and applying learning in a social context

From a different point of view, Creswell argues that there are two main types of action research as follows:

Practical Action Research Practical action research is used in situations in which teacher researchers “seek to enhance the practice of education through the systematic study of a local problem.” It usually involves a small-case research project, narrowly directs at a specific problem or issue and is undertaken by individual teachers or teams within a particular education setting.

Participatory Action Research Participatory action research is usually implemented in larger scale to improve “the quality of people’s organisation, communities and family lives”. Namely, it has a “social and community orientation” and it focuses on research that “contributes to emancipation or change in our society”.

Characteristics of Action Research

Hitherto, many scholars have attempted to characterize action research in terms of a school-based research.

McDonough proposes four characteristics of  action research as follows:

1. It is participant-driven and reflective;
2. It is collaborative;
3. It leads to change and the improvement of practice not just knowledge in itself; and
4. It is context-specific. Action research is implemented in a classroom by a particular teacher or group of teachers who work together to pursue a change or improvement in their teaching and learning issues.

Briefly speaking, Creswell proposes six key characteristics of action research as:

1. A practical focus;
2. The educator-researcher’s own practices;
3. Collaboration;
4. A dynamic process;
5. A plan of action and; and
6. Sharing research.

Creswell asserts that understanding the above characteristics will help teacher’s better design their own study to read, evaluate and use an action research study published in literature.

The Action Research Process

Steps in action research vary from different points of view as Creswell  asserts that “action research is a dynamic, flexible process” and there is “no blueprint exists for how to proceed.” Hence, it is really impossible to assert this or that researcher is right with exact four, five, six, seven or eight steps in their action research. Sometimes the number of steps in action research may vary depending on different points of view held by researchers.

Lewin’s model of action research involves a cyclic sequence including two major phases:

Diagnosis and Therapeutic

These two phases are then further divided into seven sub stages as follows:

Stage 1: In this stage, problem or just general idea about state of affair a participant wish to change or improve is identified, evaluated or formulated.

Stage 2: This stage is the time for fact finding so that a fully drawn picture of the situation is presented to help the researcher clarify the nature of the problem.

Stage 3: This stage is related and synthesized with the critical review of the problem in stage two. It aims at reviewing research literature to discover what can be learnt from comparable studies, their purposes, procedures and problems they come across come across. Usually, in this stage, the researcher generates hypotheses which attempt to enlighten some of the facts of the problem.

Stage 4: This is the stage where the researcher starts to gather relevant information to test hypotheses proposed in the previous stage. However, it is important to note that this testing of hypotheses is not statistical testing but an action seeing whether the evidence is compatible with the hypotheses. Lewin also suggests that even when one has finished testing hypotheses he should keep the status of “hypotheses” rather than “conclusions” as he may encounter situations where these hypotheses do not apply.

Stage 5: At this stage, teachers and other participants in collaborative team will discuss, negotiate and made decisions on the selection of research procedures including material choice, teaching methods, allocations of tasks, etc.

Stage 6: This stage gets participants involved in the realization of the action plan. They determine circumstances and methods of data collection, classification and analysis; they also together monitor the task and consider the choice of evaluative procedures.

Stage 7: This stage includes the interpretation of data collected and the overall evaluation of the research. At this stage, the cycle of research is likely to be repeated. At the end of each cycle, outcomes of the research are studied; some suggestions are proposed and test, etc. The projected is finally reported to the public.

Considering action research as an activity research, Nunan develops seven steps in the action research cycle :

Step1: Initiation – A problem triggers the idea of action research

Step 2: Preliminary investigation – Baseline data are collected to help understand the nature of the problem.

Step 3: Hypotheses – A hypothesis is formulated after reviewing the initial data.

Step 4: Intervention – A number of strategies are devised and applied.

Step 5: Evaluation – An assessment is carried out to evaluate the intervention. Some steps may be repeated.

Step 6: Dissemination – A report of the research is published. Ideas emerged from the research are shared.

Step 7: Follow-up – Alternative solutions for the problem are continually investigated.

To make it simple, Gay and Airasian  propose the basic steps in action research as follows:

Step 1: Identify topic or issue to study;

Step 2: Collect data related to the chosen topic or issue;

Step 3: Analyze and interpreted the collected data; and

Step 4: Carry out action planning, which represents the application of the action research results.

In contrast, Creswell looks at procedure of action research as detail process with 8 steps as:

Step 1: Determine if action research is the best design to use;

Step 2: Identify a problem to study;

Step 3: Locate resources to help address the problem;

Step 4: Identify information to be needed;

Step 5: Implement the data collection;

Step 6: Analyze the data;

Step 7: Develop a plan for action; and

Step 8: Implement the plan and reflect In brief, these above processes of action research are different from one another since they are either basic, simple or elaborate models. During the research, one may find models either more effective or less suitable than the other ones depending of particular situations and education settings.

Gerald Susman (1983) gives a somewhat more elaborate listing.  He distinguishes five phases to be conducted within each research cycle .  Initially, a problem is identified and data is collected for a more detailed diagnosis.  This is followed by a collective postulation of several possible solutions, from which a single plan of action emerges and implemented.  Data on the results of the intervention are collected and analyzed, and the findings are interpreted in light of how successful the action has been.  At this point, the problem is re-assessed and the process begins another cycle.  This process continues until the problem is resolved.

 

Action Research Model

(Adapted from Susman 1983)

Advantages of Action Research in Education

For teachers, action research can have several advantages . These include reflection on education practice, identification of strategies for improvement and acquisition of research skills. Collaborative action research has the additional benefit of engaging teachers and principals in joint work to improve education outcomes.

Action research aims at addressing an actual problem in a specific education setting namely the teacher researchers are studying a practical issue that will benefit education. Besides, teacher researchers engage in action research first and foremost because of their own situation rather than someone else’s practice. In this sense, they engage in “participatory” or “self-reflective teaching”; namely, they reflect on what they have learnt and what they can do to improve their own educational situation

Teachers as researcher and students as change-receiver profit much from action research. When looking at educational dimension of action research.

Teachers investigate their own practice in new ways, looking deeper in what they and their students actually do and fail to do.

Teachers develop a deeper understanding of students, the teacher learning process and their role in the education of both teachers and students.

Teachers are viewed as equal partners in deciding what works best and what needs improvement in their classroom or classrooms.  In most cases, solutions for identified problems are arrived cooperatively among teachers.

Teachers are often more committed to action research because they identify the areas they view as problematical and in need of change.  Action research is an ongoing process and its strategies can be widely applied.   Professional development and school improvement are core aspects for any teacher who engages in action research.

Teacher reflection can be conducted individually or in a school-based team composed of students, teachers and administrators.

Borgia and Schuler,  admits the importance of action research in education by adding that action research:

• Encourages change in schools
• Fosters a democratic approach to education
• Empowers individuals through collaboration on projects
• Positions teachers and other educators as learners who seek to narrow the gap between practice and their vision education
• Encourages educators to reflect on their practice
• Promotes a process of testing new ideas.

Limitations of Action Research

There are several limitations to action research. Theoretically, action research can be either descriptive or experimental. Most action research studies use descriptive research designs but attempt to draw conclusions about the effects of an action on some outcome. Action research studies rarely employ experimental methods, such as the use of a control group or the matching or random assignment that give experimental studies their power. Conclusions about cause and effect are reliable, only when they are based on solid experimental research designs.

Another limitation is that most action research is restricted to one classroom or school, which means that the results cannot be generalized to other classrooms or schools. Thus, action research studies often lack both internal and external validity , useful for making policy decisions.

Action researchers work in the hurly burly of their own practice. Monitoring closely this practice as they are acting within it demands space and time which, almost by definition, the practice does not give easily. It is therefore difficult to maintain rigour in data gathering and critique.

Action research is carried out by individuals who are interested parties in the research. This fact has led to criticisms of the validity of the research process, with accusations of inevitable researcher bias in data gathering and analysis.

Unfamiliarity with research methods among researchers .Action researchers frequently explore what may constitute adequate research methods at the same time as they are researching their practice. This kind of ‘on the job’ training and consequent ad hoc planning, has led to accusations of unreliability in data gathering. To some extent, this unreliability is inevitable, but the notion only makes sense in the presence of verifiably reliable data gathering. From this perspective, action research would claim that, flawed or not, the process provides the most reliable access to practice.

Action researchers draw attention to the notion of commitment. An action researcher must be committed to rigorous examination and critique of his or her practice. This, however, is a difficult principle. Commitment cannot be measured easily and the process will continue to be criticised because of this.

Action research produces results which can not be generalised .This is true, but someone else’s ideas or conclusions can always be tried out by other persons in their own practice, to see if they work for them .

Representations of the process of action research may confuse, rather than enlighten-The range of visual diagrams of the action research process are of varying complexity and, perhaps, not always helpful .

They can give a false sense of regularity to the teacher. Action research is a messy process , with forays into territory only partially related to the main focus of study, aborted lines of inquiry and continual refocusing. Hopkins (1993) criticises the tight, orderly representations  as having the potential to ‘trap teachers within a framework which they might come to depend on and which will, consequently, inhibit independent action’ .

The rhetoric of action research may be confusing, or in contradiction with the main principles of the process.

Action research is an informal research since teachers are not academic researchers; even then it is extremely suitable for education as its main purpose is to help teachers as researchers, solve their teaching problems “in action”. It allows teachers to learn about their teaching and at the same time they get an opportunity to improve their teaching. They are able to do this because action research has a cyclic process. Teachers notice what they do with what results. They learn from this. They apply their new learning to plan improvements. They try it out. They notice what happens, thus repeating the cycle.

 

 

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

 

“Goodbye, Teacher . . .” Fred Keller’s 1968

 

The Personalized System of Instruction is an approach to classroom instruction designed  to change the role of teacher from agent of information to the engineer or manager of student learning. Its workability has been instruction.

PSI was originally designed as a classroom-based method of instruction with the intention of improving student achievement and, at the same time, replacing the long tradition of punishment in education with the use of positive consequences for learning. The Personalized System of Instruction is a mastery learning model which seeks to promote mastery of a pre-specified set of objectives from each learner in a course. Students work through a series of self-paced modules

The Personalized System of Instruction fits into several paradigms, but is most closely aligned with direct instruction. It fits with direct instruction by requiring student to work on course modules independently. It fits slightly with social constructivism by also requiring students to meet weekly in peer teams with a proctor to answer questions and take a quiz on the content studied. Students do not engage in considerable team work as most social constructivist models advocate, rather, they only correct one another’s responses to proctor-led questions.

 

History and Overview

Fred Keller, Gil Sherman, Rodolpho Azzi, and Carolina Martuscelli Bori initially

developed PSI in 1963 while founding the department of psychology at the new University of

Brasilia (Keller, 1968, 1982a). Keller became the most ardent advocate of PSI, and the system is sometimes called “the Keller Plan” or “the Keller Method” in his honour. Dissatisfied with  conventional teaching methods and well-trained in learning theory, the designers sought to create  a system that rewarded students more than it penalized them, promoted mastery of the content,  and increased the amount of interpersonal communication within the classroom.

 

Personalized Systematic Instruction (PSI) had its beginnings in 1963, at a

gathering of four psychologists in the home of Fred S. Keller and, in the spring of 1965, it

was incorporated in a series of applications at Arizona State University

Since then, its principles have been utilized with success in many

settings.

Personalized instruction, few years ago, was simply a scheme for teaching

an introductory course in the principles of behaviour, and was itself an application of

the principles that it taught, not unlike programmed instruction in its major

aspects. It called for a statement of the course’s goals, an analysis of the course’s

content, self-pacing by each student through a unit sequence, with mastery

required for every step, and for evaluations made by student aides, when their

competency permitted. It took little account, however, of the fine-grained nature of

the learning-teaching process, and had little direct dependence on the applied analysis of behaviour

.

Developed and introduced in the 1960s as an alternative to the dominant lecture-based

method of college teaching, PSI shares several features in common with other approaches to

mastery learning. Yet PSI is distinguished by the considerable flexibility with which the details of the system can be implemented and, more importantly, by the remarkable amount of research  demonstrating its effectiveness in a variety of settings.

 

Defining the PSI Green has said “ The Personalised System  of Instruction  gets its name from the fact from  each student is served as an individual by another person , face to face and one to one inspite of the fact the class size is large , It is suitable for courses in which the student is expected to acquire a well defined body of knowledge or skill. The PSI  designer expects from all of his students to learn material well and in the class. He accepts the responsibility of meeting this goal with in normal limits of manpower , space and equipments “

As mentioned previously, the many different permutations of PSI can lead to some

difficulty in accurately defining and identifying what PSI is. The inherent flexibility of PSI is one of its primary strengths as a general model for course development, but it can also create

problems. These difficulties are illustrated in this warning by Sherman (1992): “A rigid

definition (of PSI) can freeze the method into a numbing formula and limit the audience…  on the other hand, a very broad definition makes PSI so inclusive as to be meaningless” . Fortunately, the extensive research on the various components of PSI can be used to develop a list of empirically-derived core features that succinctly outlines the basic parameters of PSI.

 

Objectives of PSI

• To establish better personal-social relationship in  the educational process.
• To provide frequent reinforcement to the learners.
• To provide increased  frequency and quality of feedback to the designers with the consequent benefit of a basis for meaningful revision in programme . content structure and instructional procedures.
• To reduce the reliance of the lecture for presentation or critical information by employing different devices in the instructional procedures
• To evaluate the student’s performance as compared with other students.

Key Features of PSI

The distinguishing features of PSI have been described as self-pacing, unit mastery

(Requiring the demonstration of mastery of each unit before proceeding to the next), the use of lectures and demonstrations for motivational purposes (rather than delivery of course content), an emphasis on the written word and textual materials (for delivery of course content), and the use of proctors for individual tutoring and assessment. Courses based

On PSI are also characterized by their use of specified instructional objectives, small-step

Sequenced materials, repeated testing, immediate feedback, and credit for success rather than

Penalty for errors,

 

All of the key components of PSI were derived from the overall goal of promoting

Mastery of the course content. Mastery of each unit is required because a full

understanding of material appearing later in a course is usually dependent upon mastery of the concepts, principles, facts, and/or skills appearing earlier in the course. Some degree of self pacing is required for any mastery-based teaching method because students learn at different rates, and there will be considerable variability in the amount of time it takes each student to master a unit. Lecturing, as a live performance designed to convey critical content, is impractical in such a course because it prevents the students from progressing through the material at their own pace. This leads to a reliance on textual materials, which can be accessed at the student’s convenience, as the primary vehicle for delivering the course content. Finally, proctoring was deemed necessary for PSI courses in order to administer the many assessments and, more importantly, to provide students with immediate feedback, additional tutoring or instruction, and some degree of social reinforcement for their performance.

 

Greer defines seven basic characteristics of the PSI.

1. The model focuses on the actions and reactions (behaviors) of the learner in

terms of the instructional objectives.

2. The learning tasks are analyzed behaviorally and categorically by hierarchies.

3. Learning rates and levels are systematically monitored and preserved in

numerical terms.

4. Strategies of teaching are based on scientifically derived principles of

learning.

5. Actual teacher techniques are derived from principles and systematically practiced by the teacher in the classroom and rehearsal hall.

6. Strategies, principles, and techniques, as well as student learning, are preserved systematically, and there is an explicit system of accountability.

7. The teacher is responsible, within her or his own power, for student learning .

Keller (1968) described the features of a personalized system of instruction as being self-paced, requiring mastery of each unit, using optional inspirational lectures, stressing the written word in student-teacher communication and employing student proctors for repeated testing, scoring, tutoring and enhancement. Keller has since rejected use of the lecture-as-reinforce and now recommends the implementation of other contingent rein forces.

The process for creating PSI

In the prototypical PSI course, students use a study guide and text book too individually

work through small units of material. When the student is ready, he or she will then complete an assessment, or test, based on the unit. The assessment often takes the form of a brief multiple-choice test, but virtually any format can be—and has been—used, including short-answer items, essay exams, interviews/oral assessments, problem-solving tasks, or a demonstration of skills.

 

Upon completing the assessment, the student immediately meets with a proctor for grading and feedback, discussion, and/or tutoring. If the student meets the mastery criterion for the assessment, he or she is free to continue on to the next unit; if not, then the assessment must be taken again later until mastery is achieved.

Students are allowed to retake the test as many times as necessary without penalty until their performance indicates sufficient mastery of the material. This cycle is repeated for each unit of material, with the student progressing through the course at his or her own pace. Lectures, demonstrations, laboratory exercises, and review assignments may also be incorporated throughout the course. The course is completed when the student meets the mastery criteria for all of the units.

Many PSI courses implement one or more of the key components somewhat differently

Common variations include the use of deadlines to reduce student procrastination and ensure timely completion of the course, the complete elimination of lectures, adjusting the criteria for mastery, modifying the size of the instructional units, using different student populations to serve as proctors, limiting the number of times a test can be retaken, altering the role of the proctor, eliminating proctoring, and using computers to deliver content, administer tests, and/or provide feedback. Determining exactly which features must be implemented—and how—in order for a course to be deemed a “PSI course” can be a troubling issue Guidance can be found in the empirical literature

Keller divided the process for creating PSI into the following steps:

Stress on the Written Word

Determine the material to be covered in the course. The go-at-your-own pace feature, which permits a student to move through the course at a speed commensurate with his ability and other demands of his time.

In a PSI course, the instructional content is presented in written form rather than via lectures. PSI teachers normally prepare a written study guide that is designed to assist students with learning. The study guide contains study objectives and questions that focus students’ attention on important material to be learned, and provide a clear indication of what students are expected to do. The study guide may also include instructor comments used to elucidate difficult points, exercises and practice problems to prepare students for the unit quiz, thought questions to stimulate students’ interest in the exploring the subject matter further, and a supplementary reading list. In addition to the study guide, PSI instructors also prepare a course policy statement or student manual containing an overview of the course, policies for such matters as essay expectations, deadline dates for exams, and instructor tips for good performance.

Unit Mastery Requirement

Unit mastery Students are required to demonstrate mastery of each unit before

proceeding to the next

Divide the material into self contained modules (segments). The unit-perfection requirement for advance, which lets the student go ahead to new material only after demonstrating mastery of that which proceeded

In a PSI course, content is separated into portions called units. To advance from one unit to the next, students must demonstrate that they have learned the unit’s material. In many PSI courses, students demonstrates unit mastery by taking a quiz that requires a minimum score of, for example, 80 percent or 90 percent. Students who fail the first attempt at the quiz are typically given at least two additional attempts to pass the unit by taking a different form of the unit quiz. When the course objectives require some kind of evaluation, other than a paper-and-pencil quiz such as an essay or demonstration of a physical skill), students are also given multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery. Providing remedial opportunities for students to learn substantially removes the stigma of failure. Remedial opportunities also transform the purpose of grades: grades are not used to rank students relative to each other, but are instead used as incentives to promote achievement. Unit mastery. The mastery requirement of PSI appears to be one of the most significant factors in determining student achievement. Research suggests that mastery criteria set at a high level (such as requiring 100% accuracy) may improve student learning

Student Self-Pacing

Flexible pacing Students proceed through the course at their own pace, but strategies to reduce procrastination are recommended.   Allow learners to move from module to module at their own pace. The related stress upon the written word in teacher-student communication.

A system of individualized student pacing follows from PSI’s use of a unit mastery requirement. Because some students take more time to master individual units, students will thus progress through a PSI course at different rates. Some students finish a PSI course relatively quickly, while others require the total allotted time to finish the course. As such, once a PSI course has begun, students enrolled n the same course, will work on different units of the same course depending on their rate of progress. Unlike the lock-step model of traditional instruction, a self-paced model recognizes and accounts for differences among students in the rate at which they learn the course material and avoids grade penalties for students who require more time to learn. Although PSI can be used within conventional academic time units like semesters, PSI works especially well when an entire institution functions on a self-paced basis Flexible pacing. The self-pacing aspect of PSI can prove somewhat troubling and controversial A certain degree of self-pacing is necessary in order to allow students of varying abilities to each achieve mastery of the material, but research on the issue indicates that self-pacing in and of itself does not impact student learning (In fact, there is some evidence that mastery programs that limit self pacing may produce superior achievement).

Of course, the primary problem associated with total self-pacing is that of student

procrastination. When a student has complete control over when they study and take quizzes for a course, it is not difficult to understand how competing obligations with fixed deadlines can quickly take priority. Procrastinators can create logistical problems for themselves, their

instructors, and their institution’s administration), as well as get so far

behind that they “despair of catching up, and drop out, frustrated and demoralized” (Kulik et al., 1978, p. 9). Indeed, the self-paced nature of PSI is likely the primary reason some PSI courses have lower completion rates than conventional courses

Use of Proctors

The use of proctors, which permits repeated testing, immediate scoring, almost unavoidable tutoring, and a marked enhancement of the personal-social aspect of the educational process

PSI courses make use of course staff called proctors or tutors to help students learn the material, administer unit quizzes, provide feedback regarding unit quiz performance, and conduct certain administrative tasks such as maintaining student records. PSI proctors can be external or internal proctors. External proctors are former students who receive academic credit for proctoring a course. Internal proctors are students enrolled in the course, who have passed early units in the course, and are now assisting students with the units they have already mastered. Some PSI courses also make use of professional tutors or proctors who are paid for their work. In an online environment, tutors can have homepages that provide contact information and autobiographical sketches for students Peer tutoring. As originally conceived, proctors in a PSI course served to administer and score quizzes, provide feedback on student performance, and discuss the material with the student or provide tutoring. Even though some of these functions, such as quiz administration and the provision of feedback, can now be performed by computers, proctors still play an important in personalizing the student’s learning experience. Proctors can be the key to improving the individualization of instruction, increasing student motivation, and enhancing “the personal social aspect of the educational process”.

Proctoring is renamed “peer tutoring” here for two reasons. The first is that the term

“tutoring” seems to better reflect the most meaningful role of the PSI “proctor,” as the term

“proctoring” typically suggests merely the supervision and/or administration of exams. When

Keller & Sherman (1982a) describe the proctor as “the mediating figure, the bridge that helps to span the student-teacher gap of understanding”, they seem to be referring to far more than

just the proctor’s administrative skills. Further, proctors in PSI courses are usually fellow

students who have completed the course already (external proctors) or are currently enrolled in the course (internal proctors), making them true peers. An additional reason for using “peer tutoring” is to more directly connect PSI and its users to the substantial amount of educational research that now exists on tutoring and peer tutoring

Immediate feedback.

Immediate feedback on academic performance has always been an important characteristic of PSI. Typically, this function has been served by proctors, who would grade student quizzes immediately upon completion and provide written or oral feedback. In fact, the literature suggests that the provision of immediate feedback is the proctor function that has the most significant impact on student learning. Because feedback can also be delivered effectively via computerized means however, it seems useful to separate this component from other proctor functions. While proctors or other people can certainly still be used to provide feedback, using computers to do so can relieve some of the administrative stress associated with PSI and allow course personnel more time to engage  in tutoring and discussion with the students. Of course, some forms of assessment may still require a human to evaluate and provide feedback. No matter what method is used to deliver the feedback, though, immediacy is important: research shows that “delaying feedback in PSI courses interferes with student retention of course material.

Lectures and Demonstrations as Motivational Devices

Create methods of evaluating the degree to which the learner has conquered the material in a given module. The use of lectures and demonstrations as vehicles of motivation, rather than sources of critical information.

With PSI’s emphasis on the written word, lectures tend to be de-emphasized. However, the founders of PSI also felt there was a place for lectures in order to stimulate the students’ interest in the subject matter, so occasional lectures were initially included as a feature of a PSI course. Unlike the other components of PSI, lectures have not been demonstrated to be effective in boosting student academic performance), and should be considered as an optional feature of the method, at best, that might be reserved for those rare spellbinding lecturers. Note that PSI is an evolving data-driven system, not an ideological model that asserts. priori definitions about what represents good instruction. The data dissuading teachers from lecturing illustrate that PSI is a model that is subject to alterations in accordance with new data.

Suggestions  for Implementing a PSI Course

• Plan comprehensively before it is introduced.
• Choose quality instructional materials that are appropriate for your students’ comprehension level; empirically verified materials are preferable . Make the first units easy (and perhaps smaller) to build confidence; increase difficulty gradually
• Avoid including too much material in each unit; the units have to appear manageable to the students
• When possible, include review material in assignments, assessments, and other instructional activities
• Make assessments as comprehensive and consistent with unit objectives as possible, but also as brief as possible (some students will be taking them multiple times!) .\
• Make use of faster students within the class to tutor slower ones
• Encourage frequent feedback from students so that instructional materials and assessments can be revised and made more effective for future students
• Provide students with easy access to their course records; using a web-based course

management system, such as Blackboard or WebCT, may be a good solution

• Choose tutors carefully and reward them appropriately; explore different tutoring options and arrangements until you find one that works for your course
• Start small, and be prepared for a large initial expenditure of time developing

assignments and assessments; as with any course, future implementations should require less time,

• Orientation courses should be organised for teachers , to provide background of PSI  system ,because  introduction of PSI needs restructuring of present classrooms which requires great resource implications

Conclusion

It is likely that much of PSI’s popularity has been due to the inherent flexibility of the

system. From its inception, PSI was designed to provide a general framework for effective

teaching that would allow the instructor the option of using a variety of instructional materials or  techniques within individual course lessons. The core unit of instruction in PSI is “more like the  conventional home-work assignment or laboratory exercise” and “the use of a programmed text,  a teaching machine, or some sort of computer aid within such a (PSI) course is entirely possible  and may be quite desirable, but it is not to be equated with the course itself” (Keller, 1968). By employing this larger and more general unit of instruction and analysis, PSI grants the instructor considerable flexibility in utilizing other pedagogical tools within the course, and makes the system easier to implement with conventional instructional materials (such as  textbooks and study guides). Evidence suggests that instructors can improve the quality of their  courses by “simply” adopting the core elements of PSI, while still being able to incorporate  whatever types of activities, assignments, assessments, and/or experiences they may value. This  makes the model exceptionally accessible to a wide range of instructors, as its implementation  requires neither an advanced degree in instructional design nor the use of a prescribed set of instructional materials.

Now a days, educators who wish to use PSI have several important advantages over their

counterparts from the previous century. Perhaps the most obvious is the potential that modern

information technology has for improving certain aspects of PSI courses. Computers and web based course management systems such as Blackboard and WebCT can easily be used to

administer and score examinations and certain practice activities  Peer tutoring, proctoring,

and other collaborative activities can also be accomplished via a variety of computer-mediated means, such as email and synchronous or asynchronous online conferencing A reliance on textual materials is no longer needed either, as the multimedia capabilities of integrative technologies such as the world wide web can be utilized to deliver on-demand course content.

__________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal

K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Working together at a practical level and agreeing on minor issues does not however take the place of building an educational philosophy. How can a teacher and /or an educator build a philosophy that his own educational efforts will be based upon and that he will try to propogates as far as possible? Let us consider this question. We shell do so by means of the same categories that have been employed in our analysis of various ancient, medieval and modern education philosophies.

There are today a whole host of problems which impinge on education, educators and individual school systems. Few of the most important of areas of concern are:

Aims of Education-

It is common when teachers, administrators, board of education, parents groups or group of citizens start to think about education that they begin with objectives. In trying to be responsible about the work of the school, it makes sense for them to ask, “just what is it that education is trying to do, or should be trying to do? What do we wish to accomplish in the elementary grade or in the secondary school? or more specifically any one related with education may ask teachers at each grade level just what their objective are for each content area.”

Education is for whatever life is for. These days we hear much speculation to the effect that human life is not for ‘anything’ that in the popular terms, it is ‘meaningless’. The nature of this assertion has probably not been examined thoroughly by some of those who make it. We find meanings in part of situations, relative to the whole, can life as a whole be said to have ‘meaning’ in the same sense that a parts do? The answer seems to depend upon whether there is any larger rational whole into which human life fits. To ask this is to ask the final metaphysical question, what is? The existentialist for example, as an atheist denies that any conscious, rational being designer, created, sustains, governs or has any plan for man. Therefore, he denies that life taken as a whole can possible have any meaning, except the meanings each life has, no rational context beyond itself, one could still make a strong case that each person should simply give life with meaning by what he does thinks and feels. To do something challenging but possible, to do it will. This is the essence of art. But art envision nothing beyond itself. The believer in God and in the afterlife will want to put art in a context to make it serve ethical ends. Art has compensations in its sheer process, but the product must serve man’s supernatural destiny, “for they are all made for man’s use.”

Aims are commonly stated in terms of skills it is expected that the pupil should have mastered at a given grade level and the knowledge’s which he should possess. As this level philosophizing about education-and to charging those who are engaged in it are quite free in referring to it as philosophy- can have dissensions among us. Nevertheless, there are two justifications for this level of educational thinking, which concerned to pinpoint aims. First is that if it is carefully done and fully grounded in more fundamental thinking, it can give very helpful and concrete guidance to classroom teaching. The second justification is that if it is undertaken with responsibility and intellectual penetration, if will disclose the need for philosophizing of another sort. By this mean that to think responsibility about the aims of education will lead to the recognition that aims cannot just be pulled out of a hat but must be derived from more fundamental and general thinking about value, reality and knowledge.

Methodology of Instruction

‘How to teach’ depends quite directly upon the nature of knowledge, which depends quite directly upon the nature of man. The methods that psychology has produced for teachers are, in themselves, mostly good, clearly superior to some methods of the past. Their very efficiency becomes a sort of blinder, thought threatening to eclipse the issue of what they are for.

Different philosophies have treated how the teacher takes the student from known to unknown by a sort of rational discourse, pointing out new relationships among elements the student already “knows”. This can prove or disprove by trying it for a reasonable time. No matter how much or little structuring a teacher does, what he is usually concerned to accomplish for the student to grasp important ideas,

Aside from the theology, how can one prove the exigencies of intellect? One way is by introspection, by noticing what one do when one think, when one solve problems and by indirectly observing what other people seem to do.

Out of various methodical issues, basic one that crops up perennially concerns the relative roles of experience and of reason in learning and in teaching. If man were a physical organism and nothing more, if his ‘intellect’ were mealy a name for certain neurophysiologic functions of correlating and connecting sense-data then experience, mostly direct, would be not merely the ideal way to learn but the only way, if, again, man were a soul somewhat haphazardly materialized, remembering things from a past experience, then Plato’s prescription would apply.  If man is a composite of matter and spiritual soul, then he learns by sensations and imaged, and most importantly, by abstracting from them with his intellect and employing these abstractions in deductions and judgments.

Question of Creativity

Is creativity a common trait? Does the school encourage or discourage creativity. If creativity can be taught, is it a legitimate function of the school to identify, isolate, and teach it? Is creativity a desirable thing in a contemporary, mass-conformity society? Is creativity in the economically and culturally disadvantaged, dangerous to the rest of society?

What definitions of creativity are most valuable for the school? If we value creativity too highly, don’t we infect, run the danger of stifling it?

Question of Segregation-Desegregation

Should the school take society as it finds it and work within the context or should it try to change it? What should the relationship be between segregated housing and the school? Can or should the school as a social institution become an instrument of social policy. At what level should school policy of desegregation be determined? Is it the responsibility of local school board, the state board or the ministry of Education? Assuming that segregation and desegregation have different effects upon student, is this a legitimate educational concern.

What priority should be placed on faculty desegregation. Is there a difference between desegregation and integration? Should the schools strive for desegregation, integration, both or neither. Are the problems of Segregation. Desegregation  different in different settings? Is it necessary to deal differently with segregation that is de-facto and segregation which is de-jure?

Question of Church-State Relationship

To what extent should the school be concerned with religious education. Is it possible to teach without religion? Is it desirable to teach about religion? Is there a moral imperative to ignore the Legal decisions which have severely restricted the place of religion in the schools? Is it a responsibility of the school and of educators in the school to bring all students to knowledge of God? What is the responsibility of the school to students professing to be atheists or whose parents are atheists? What should be the attitude of school be to words the children of faith of minorities. Should the schools allow children time off to go to religious training. Should members of religious orders be permitted to teach in schools?

Curriculum

The treatments of educational philosophies have encountered quite a few curricular issues and varieties. Basically, though the question is where the curriculum should come from? One can concede without argument that is must be limited and shaped to at least a minor extent by the limits of the learner at any given stage. Still why have a curriculum at all? What demands it, if anything? The traditionalist, who is still content to define curriculum, as “a course of study” sees it as resting largely upon reality itself. Certainly any course of studies has its arbitrary, man chosen aspect, but even these are means of accomplishing certain things in a world that is as it is:

A philosophical realist will say, “Teach arithmetic’s because the world has arithmetical aspects”. A pragmatist will say, “Teach arithmetic because, and only so far as, if has proved a useful tool in solving problems”. The Realist thinks of the curriculum as having a certain status and structure in the abstract, in potentiality, the teacher’s goal is to help the students actualize that structure in him. The pragmatist will more likely see the curriculum as having no status at all except in the concrete, teacher and students together produce it  out of their interactions and ‘felt needs’.

If one believes in objective truth, one is logically committed to believe in some sort of fixed, perhaps required, curriculum. It is a face that the mind’s ability to attain certain and unchangeable truth, if the mind has, indeed, the power if seems inescapable that the cumulative culture and wisdom of its past exercise should not be preserved in a curriculum that is, in part unchanging and prescribed.

The respective roles of experience and intellect or of faith and reason, likewise are clearly, pertinent to curriculum. The ‘experience curriculum’ is the child of empiricism, which a moderate intellectualism dictates that children must be taught to reason about the idea presented to them and argues for a methodical, orderly procedure in exposition of subject matter. Again, if God has revealed important truths of his nature and plan for men, those obviously should be taught to young, which, if there is no such revelation, equally obviously it follows that it should not be taught.

The Concept of Student

The nature of man is partly a issue here. If there is no fixed human nature, if man is indefinably perfectible, if genetic inheritance sets no insurmountable limits, then a case and be made for giving everyone as many years of schooling as he wishes. If there is a fixed human nature, if intelligence is largely fixed by heredity (the first issue is ontological, the second empirical), then it is appropriate to expose only the more intelligent students to intellectually demanding courses. Also, if man in the technical sense intended by theologians, a rational creature, and then an education that helps him develop his nature must be aimed at expanding his mental horizons. Such an education must needs be limited by the quantitative potentialities in this respect of each learner.

Among the points in debate here, the chief one is, shall schooling, especially at higher levels, be for everyone who wants it, or for a selected minority? If the latter what shall be the basis of selection? In so far as education stresses “organism adjustment”. The understandable tendency is for its institutions to welcome all who wish to come. In so far as intellectual cultivation or development of specific talents, such as art or music is stressed, there must be some screening, not all can profit substantially from it. The fairly inevitable basis for this screening is specific talent or general academic potential, than is, intelligence. Much emotionalism has been attached to some discussions by life adjustment theorists on this problem. They see it as undemocratic to educate a minority and often were achievement about the development of elite, seeing this as a great evil of course, elitism is apt also to connote social and political favoritism, as well as superiority in specifically academic matters, The connotation has been rather gratuitously attacked by the life adjustments however. There is a natural aristocracy of brains. Some people are brighter than other. One may evaluate the face as one like, but in the end one must accommodate it.

Agencies of Education

Amid contention and bitterness how can one decide what agencies have what right and duties in education?

To decide the proper concerns of family and state therefore there is a need to examine the essential character of each. Some sociologists and others presently view the individual as existing for the family and the family for the state or society. The rearing of children is often held to be a minor concern, and the rather obvious end of the sexual act, the procreating of children is held to be in incidental relation. Few persons deny, however, that the family is a group, as distinct form, a collection of individuals, and few deny that parents owe more to their children than bringing then into the world, feeding, clothing, and housing then. Even the beasts watch their young and teach them.

If the family were a derivative of the state and possessed of on role or function save those with which the state might choose to endow it, the family would have no educational rights or obligations toward the children. If the family is the first and most natural type of human society, with an intrinsic role not bestowed by the state, then it has both rights and duties towards children’s schooling.

Finally what is the state? Its nature dictates it, prerogative. These must always be differentiated from its ‘powers’. Most government exercise many powers that do not rest on any clearly established ‘rights’ If Hegal was right, if the state is the absolute or the closet expression of it man can recognize, then its educational warrant is unlimited. If, however, the state is one society among other, a natural society whose proper end is man’s temporal good, its educational rights duties are limited accordingly.

The School as a Social Institution

What is education about? What should education try to do? These are questions which can be asked collectively as well as individually. To philosophize concerning aims in a social sense, and not just in terms of what the school should do for the individual, is to ask for a rational for the school as an institution. This is not uncommon theme in the literature of educational philosophy. Plato in the ‘Republic’ considered, at least speculatively, the possibility of taking children away from the corrupt society which had given them birth  and in some separate place by means of an expurgated literature giving mankind a fresh start through a proper education, and also there by building an ideal state.

John Amos Comenius, in the seventeenth Century, regarded education as equal to physical procreation as a necessity in making man. He had come across reports of instances in which human infants have been reared by animals and as a result followed a pattern of life closer to that of the animals with which they have lived than to human patterns. He argued therefore that the culture of man had to give form to the human potentialities with which we are born, in order for us to be men. And this is the task of education. This is why he characterized education as “a true forging place of men”.

John Dewey, has argued that the school exists to provide a special environment for the formative years of human life. Such a special environment is needed in past because civilization is too complex to provide an economic setting for learning. A special environment such as the school can also eliminate the unworthy features of human society as it is. And further the school as special environment can provide a balance of influence which society itself will not give, providing greater breadth from other cultures and avoiding parochialism.

Theodore. M. Greene tried to work out a division of labor among the institutions of society according to which the school is the “mind” of the body politic. The state being the “Sword and shield”, the family the “heart”, the Church the “soul”, and business the “hands”. Most readers would readily agree with Dr. Greene that these are risky metaphors. The big question is of course, on what grounds can roles or tasks be assigned to the school or any other institution? Can we say that we prefer to think of the school in this or that particular way, and just leave it there? Or must we not have some validation for assigning functions.

Academic Freedom and Indoctrination

Teachers through the ages have been searching for definite criteria for deciding how free the teacher should be to teach whatever and however he wants. No thoughtful person could say the problem is even now fully solved. At one extreme some teachers and professors have been discharged and even persecuted for teaching conclusions that were demonstrably true, simply because someone in a powerful position found them discomforting. The vigilance with which some communities scrutinize text books for sentences and phrases that might sound ‘socialists’ illustrates this mentality at its extreme. At the other extreme, some teachers have held that they have a right to teach what so ever they choose, whether it is demonstrably true even if it is demonstrably false, and even if they do not themselves, believe it. Obviously, the thing has frequently been discussed with more heat than light.

There is a need, as always some philosophical criterion. The question can be approached in various ways, but seems to be mainly an epistemological one. If no conclusions are beyond reasonable doubt then no conclusion or even ‘fact’ deserves a monopoly over others competing with it. By the same token, however, it is difficult to say, then, why it is of great importance to stress any given line of thought. If, however, certain things can be known beyond reasonable doubt, then the teacher has no justifiable options as to whether they shall be taught. A certain freedom of inquiry and expression is necessary to scholars, but in the end the mind to teacher and students alike must be determined by what is question of the indoctrination hinge on the same epistemological question. If all is open to legitimate doubt, anyone is indoctrinating who does more than indicate various possible alternative beliefs and such, indoctrination is not justified. If however there is objective knowledge, the teacher should present it as knowledge and opinions as opinion. To present either as the other is wrong. Now and then teachers present established truth as if it were merely personal belief, which is just as misleading as presenting the later as the former.

The division of causality in the teaching learning process is also quite relevant here. If the student is the principle cause of his own learning and the teacher an instrumental cause, the heart of indoctrination’s evil lies in the “Because I say so” sort of answer. The teacher is presumed sometimes on scant evidence-to be an expert in a field, but his status as such does not justify his operating behind a smoke-screen of alleged personal infallibility. “Expert must be held accountable”. The teacher’s job is not simply to say “This is the way it is” but to help the learner to “see why it is this way”.

Theory of Knowledge

While discussing knowledge theory now the first question one confronts is, where shall one begin? Does one begin with reality? Does one begin with the self that wants the knowledge? Or is this a false antithesis, as Dewey has argued because the theory of evolution shown that man and Nature are one, there being fundamentally no knowledge problem? The question actually needs to be rephrased where must we begin? How can we begin with reality, when it is we ourselves who are making the beginning and asking for knowledge of ‘reality’? And how can we begin with the continuity of man and Nature, when this is a point of beginning at least once removed from selfhood, namely, an assumption about a relationship which is at least partly outside of ourselves.

The next question has to do with the kind of relation we find ourselves to have with the world which is beyond us. Does the world make no sense to us what so ever? That is, is it so completely disparate with selfhood that there is no harmony, no communication, no trace of synchronization between the patterns of world and patterns of the self? Is this what we find in our experience of the world? Or do we instead find that there is some degree of correspondence between the experience of the self and its environment, that there is some communication, that man has some native psychological sense of being at home in the world? Our recognition of what we observe concerning the relation of the self to the world is of almost significance. For if there is complete disparity and disjointedness, then there is no effective relation at all. In this case, we have the conditions of insanity and no way of knowing anything beyond our own subjective enclosure. But if the latter set of questions more closely suggests our relation with the world, then we can rather certainly say that man is an interpreter who lives in a world that lends itself to interpretation. And if man is an interpreter in an interpret-able world, the implication is that in essence reality partakes of the nature of self-hood and not of an essence which is entirely foreign to it, such as a cause-effect machine or an impersonal process of events and relations.

One major word in this section on knowledge theory, is concerns the subject of openness to the building of a philosophy of education. Education has been hounded in the past, and is not infrequently assailed today, by religious bigotry which cannot avoid operating as a vested interest as it confronts the organized educational institution of society. At the same time, however, today we are as frequently bound in the loyalty to secularism which is just as much as impediment to truth seeking as is domination by religion. True religion, now is opposed to both of these tyrannies. Is opposes totalitarianism in ideas regardless of whether the controlling authority is religious or secular. How can the truth be known unless we are willing to know what it means, among other things, openness to the possibility of revelation. And, if  there is God. He certainly must be able to reveal himself. The critical question as to whether or not God has revealed himself in history and whether he continue to reveal himself, is a further question which may be beyond the subject of educational philosophy.

Theory of Reality

This will involve the consideration of question both about reality in the large, as in the cosmos or the totally of whatever is, and about reality in the more immediate and concrete, as represented in man and in ourselves as individuals.

There have been of course many views of the nature of reality. There is a simple or naïve naturalism, according to which reality and nature are made identical and fondly thought of in the likeness of a perfect-perpetual-motion machine, operating with perfect efficiency and obeying implicitly such laws as gravitation and cause-and-effect. Here values in our human experience just grow; they can be rich and refined as anyone’s taste would prefer, but they are still just a gardener variety which grows in the soil of Nature. Education has a place as guide and augmentation of nature maturation. Its function of course is to harmonize the life of the individual with Nature and reduce to minimum the artificialities by which human society. So easily complicate things and pulls man’s roots from the soil of Nature.

On the other hand pragmatism, experimentalism,  etc hold that Nature is not a simple machine nor does it operates according to fixed laws. Nature is rather a process in which all things are flowing and changing within its process is a kind of other like matrix in which normal life with the usual occurrence and abnormality is at a maximum. In this fluid order of natural events, man, and society, the values which we enjoy arise and have their normal habitat. Here is the range for all the enrichment and refinement possible to human experience but again, the value are a garden  variety which just grow in the soil of the natural-human order, Education in this metaphysical context has the task of representing the social process to children and youth in the manner depicted earlier in the first reference to Dewey. The task of the school is to provide a special environment for the young which will simply purify and balance the environment of man as it grows naturally.  The purpose to which the school is directed is that of equipping children to cope with the emergencies of a changing order and to keep them in relationship throughout with the human social process.

Another view of reality is quite different, is that whatever reality is “it is real”. This means that reality is what it is in spite of man’s knowledge of it, his relations with it, or any manipulations of it which he may attempt. Reality according to this view is completely objective and independent of man and is devoid of any fundamentally spiritual quality, on the contrary some realists reality is spiritual at the same time that it is physical, or it is fundamentally spiritual in a sense prior to the physical, or even it is positively supernatural. But being spiritual in essence, it is still independent and objective as far as man is concerned. Thus knowledge is of consummate importance for adjustment in life. For it the knowledge of history of world, man’s past, his culture and civilizations are also important. The school in such a context is primarily, the medium of transmission of dependable knowledge and of the conforming of individuals and new generations to reality as it is, until it opens itself to the possibility that man may become related to God and be oriented toward a life which is eternal as well as to a life of human relationship. There is a theistic or theological view  of reality. According to it man reflects how ever imperfectly. The  ONE BEING. Man as a soul or spirit as well as body is made in the image of this one Being, who is ultimate. The work of education can never be complete, however well it accomplishes is task in terms of human relationship

There are two desperate elements in any complete conception of man. The first of these is the essential nature of man, an answer to the question, what is that constitutes him? And the second is the moral condition of man, and appraisal of his ethical status and potential as compared to what he may become.

The view of essential nature of man range from a description of him as a physical organism, to an understanding of him as a soul,  made in the image of God. One view is that man is a highly developed animal, a child of Nature, But one for whom ageless antecedents of evolutionary developments have prepare the way, an organism with such a highly developed nervous system that has highly refined powers for responding to the stimuli around him, Another view as that man is a social-vocal organism, an abstraction, unless he is in social relationship, but having unprecedented powers for communication, and there by equipped for group life at a level for beyond that of animals.

That last view to be mentioned is that man is a creation of God into whom has been breathed a soul which has potentialities for life the spirit. According to this way of looking at man, he has powers of freedom and self determination which animals do not have and is therefore not only equipped for group life but also has potentiality for an eternal life of the spirit.

As regards to moral condition of man, for some people, consideration of moral status of man is relevant, because they consider man is a non-moral species in a non-moral universe where morality has nothing to do with existence. There are many, however, for whom this concern is highly relevant one, and they offer differing specific answers as to what the moral status of man is. There are those who say that man is fundamentally good, the child of a reality which is fundamentally good, his evil beings the result of mistakes, or of blocks standing in the way of his natural goodness.

Another view is that man is a mixture of good and evil, not purely one or the other. Some of his acts are good and some  are bad, and so we have a world in which good and evil are intermixed. There is also the view of man’s moral stature according to which, he is morally sick creature who needs to be healed. Which he is fundamentally good in intention and always seeks well in everything he does, there is an ailment in his judgment and sometimes in his will which makes him choose evil when it is really good, he assumes his choice will bring. Finally there are also those who, viewing man’s moral condition, say that there is more wrong with him morally than a sickness of judgment and will which needs healing. He has gone through a change since his original creation which is so radical as to amount to a fall from original goodness to a sinful state. He is therefore described by the adjective “depraved” and is regarded as being corrupted in his entire nature, unable to make right judgments, good choices, or even to have fully valid knowledge of truth, until he is restored, to his original condition.

The consequence of such views of man for education is quite as direct as is that of views of the cosmos. For views of man are also assumptions concerning the one who is to be educated, paralleling the context to a world view provides for the task of education.

Theory of Value

One important question is this: what is the status of values in existence? Are all values purely transient, as some say, and exists only because there is some sentient subject who enjoys them? And will all values cease to be when mankind has passed from the scene or has blasted himself out of existence by his achievements in nuclear physics? Or are there some values which are permanent and abiding? Are there values which exist independently of man and are good and to be desired whether man desires and possesses them or not. If there are such abiding values, do thing exist, as it were, under their own power, as Platonic ideas are supposed to exist or as the law of gravity and mathematical relations are alleged to exist? Or instead, do these abiding values have permanence because they are attributes or qualities of character which God has, and are of and dependent open one being that alone has ultimate existence?

An important value question has to do with the manner in which human subjects come into the experience of their possessors, who are assumed to be perfectly passive recipients? Or must the human subject somehow put himself out, as we say, exert efforts, or participate in some way in order to embrace value in his experience? If value experiences come to us without any reference to our actions in relation to them, then it would appear that there is no significance for education in value theory. It might even be that education itself has no significance, and that value experience will be ours whether we are educated or not. In the other hand, if effort is involved in value experience, then it becomes clear that the growth and development of the human individual, together with the teaching thrust of human cultures in their institutions of education, reflects a profound aspect of value, namely, that implicit in the nature of value in the necessity for education.

One more major value question is whether or not of a root value from which all other values stem, and what it may be, Now, if all values are transitory and contingent solely upon the sentient life of man, individual and collective, then human society and the individual man’s relation to it become of prime importance, If one want to enter into the fullest possible value that one have in short span of living, it is imperative that one maintain unbroken relation with the social process. There is nothing but nothingness to be gained by withdrawing into and ivory tower, or escaping into one’s own private world. Education in such a value context must necessarily be social –education in society and for social relationship.

However, if some values exist independently of man and if they have their existence as qualities of one who alone has being, then the source of value for man is quite different. The importance of human society is not made less, but it is longer the exclusive source of value, Individual man is still a unit of mankind. But God is the source of value both for individual and for social man. And accordingly some kind of effectual relation to God become the gate way to value and value experience-at least to ultimate value. Education in such a value context should be no less social, but it will

Face the difficult fact that man’s value experiences are contingent upon theological concerns as well as social concerns. It will recognize that the full import of man’s value experiences is not understood unless it is viewed as having a horizon beyond which there is an abiding value experiences with which it has some connection.

There are all sort of other subject of major importance to educators. Just a list of few areas of controversy without any comment:

• Sex Education
• Role of mass-media in Education
• Deviant Behavior (Juvenile Delinquency)
• Vocation Training, Technical Training, or Academic Training
• “Frills” in the school (Music band, Games etc.)

To suggest that there is any single correct answer to these and to the dozens of the other questions which are the constant concerns for educators would be foolish indeed. Everything we have said to this point should indicate that here are a variety of different ways of approaching any of these questions. Logic, however, would seems to indicate that manner which we deal with any of these questions be consistent. It is in the study of a variety of logical, self contained and internally consistent frame works for viewing education, that the study of educational philosophy becomes important.